Invited Speakers

Dr. Agnieszka Golicz

Justus-Liebig University Giessen

Exploring Plant Structural Genomic Diversity with Graphical Pangenomics

Abstract: It is undeniable that structural variation has an impact on a variety of crop traits. One of the key challenges of pangenomic research is not only to catalogue species-wide genomic variation, but also make it available for downstream applications and especially genome wide association studies (GWAS). Pangenome graphs are an algorithmic innovation which represent the sequence content of an entire population, species or a clade by generating a non-redundant data structure, while retaining information on genomic diversity. The talk will explore the potential applications of pangenomics and graphical pangenomics for crop improvement from structural variant identification and genotyping, to gene expression quantification and associating variants with traits.

Dr. John Lovell

HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology

Detecting and deploying complex functional variation across multiple reference genomes

Abstract: Multiple reference genomes aggregated into single queryable resources (i.e. 'pangenomes') are rapidly becoming powerful foundations for population and quantitative genomics in agriculture; however, most pangenome applications rely on extensions of the single-reference paradigm. Looking forward, it is clear that there are tremendous opportunities, but also methodological challenges, to leverage the diversity represented in pangenome resources, especially with complex variants that are typically invisible to most bioinformatic tools. Here, I discuss our efforts to build pangenome-anchored methods to test evolutionary and trait discovery hypotheses, then describe results at several challenging loci across the diversity of flowering plants, including centromere structure in pennycress, deletions and duplications in sorghum, and highly diverged sequences in pecan.

Dr. Roberto Papa

Università Politecnica delle Marche

Crop domestication and the evolution of Agroecosystems

Abstract:

Dr. Jonathan Jacobs

Ohio State University

Gene gain and loss in bacterial niche-specificity

Abstract: Plant pathogens emerge and threaten crop health, often as a result of identifiable genomic changes. Gene gain and loss are key drivers in the evolution of traits that lead to niche shifts. My team focuses on the specific events of pathogen emergence to mechanistically describe how microbes evolve to cause disease. We also partner directly with producers to develop genome-driven management strategies. I will present research advances describing microbial tissue- and host-specificity, and the genomic changes that have led to shifts in environmental spread.

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