20-21 January 2015
INRA Nancy-Lorraine Center
LEGF conference room

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The Pezizomycetes belong to an early diverging class within the Pezizomycotina.The Pezizomycetes are either saprobic, mycorrhizal or pathogens; the biotic interactions of many taxa are not known. Species are found in soils, wood decays, leaves, roots and dung. Some Pezizomycetes species are well know due to their edible fructifications (so-called ascocarps) such as truffles and morchels. Ascobolus immersus, a Pezizomycete species living on herbivore dung (coprophilous) has been introduced in the late 1930s as a model organism for genetic studies. To date, only the genome of two Pezizomycetes have been published: Tuber melanosporum (Martin et al., 2010) and Pyronema confluens (Traegger et al., 2013).

To help close the sequence gap among basal filamentous ascomycetes, and to allow conclusions about the evolution of fungal development, the genome and transcriptomes of six additional Pezizomycetes have been sequenced: Ascobolus immersus, Choiromyces venosus, Morchella conica, Terfezia boudieri, Tuber aestivum and Tuber magnatum.

A workshop will be held at INRA-Nancy on January 20-21, 2015 to discuss the structure and evolution of these Pezizomycete genomes and comparative analyses of their gene repertoires.

To consult the workshop home page and the full program, follow this link:
Program

On December 11 and 12, the International Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB) for LabEx ARBRE met at the INRA Nancy-Lorraine Center in Champenoux. The board was composed of a panel of seven scientists recognized for their expertise in the different areas of research included in LabEx. Over two days, the ISAB board members interacted with members of the ARBRE Executive Board and ARBRE project leaders to learn about the scope of LabEx and the direction and quality of work within the ARBRE community.   They also had a chance to visit labs and technical platforms located on-site in Champenoux. Two years after the launch of ARBRE, the ISAB was asked to evaluate ARBREs scientific strategy and the priorities set by each of the thematic actions or work packages. In the context of a competitive international environment, this advisory evaluation is important for the future positioning of ARBRE and the INRA Nancy-Lorraine Center relative to other major research centers located in Europe and the United States. The advice, suggestions and conclusions of the ISAB will be taken into account for the evaluation of submitted project proposals for the ARBRE 2015 Call for Proposals. The next International Scientific Advisory Board meeting will be held at the end of 2016.

To read more about the International Scientific Advisory Board members, please follow this link – The ISAB

On November 25, the Lorraine Regional Council organized its first evening promoting higher education, research and science-society relations to announce the award winners for distinguished dissertations and research.  The occasion also marked the first time presentation of the Regional award for Science and Society.

The participatory research project SURVIVORS, lead by Labex ARBRE, INRA, CPIE Nancy-Champenoux and the college Duvivier d’Einville au Jard, was also awarded a special mention for innovation. For three years, some 80 students will experience research as young scientists – both a unique way to discover the scientific investigative processes but also a window into the many career possibilities in science.

Wednesday, November 26 marked yet another highlight for the project with on-site visits from researchers to the classrooms to present students with the experiments first results .

The SURVIVORS project has also been selected to be included in the international conference “Science & You”, which will be held in Nancy in June 2015. The SURVIVORS students have been invited by researchers to participate in the conference by giving a slide-show presentation on the project, with the help of their English teachers..

The GFPF seminar (Groupe Francophone de Pathologie Forestière) was held recently for three days in Hendaye from 14-16 October 2014
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Jointly organized by the Département de la Santé des Forêts (DSF-MAAF) and the UMR IAM and partially funded by grants from Labex ARBRE, the seminar gathered 38 participants, mostly from DSF, INRA Bordeaux and INRA Nancy-Lorraine, including 10 scientists or technicians from the joint research unit UMR IAM (Tree/Microorganism Interactions). Fourteen presentations were given, including six by IAM team members, about recent results on the epidemiology of the major pathosystems currently being studied: Poplar rust, Alder Phytophthora and Ash Dieback.

The seminar’s major focus was on the introduction of emerging diseases, such as Ash dieback, ink diseases (on oaks and chestnuts) due to Phytophthora cinnamomi and Pitch Canker, a new disease on Pines caused by Gibberella circinata. This fungus is common in North America where it causes canker and necrosis on twigs, branches, trunks and roots of many pine species. It was introduced in Europe in the 1990s and is now well established in northern Spain. Aside from a few cases  that appeared in the early 2000s, the disease has not yet spread to France.   The GFPF meeting also included field tours of forests in Spain to visit infected areas to better understand the disease symptoms and the host range. Discussions also addressed the risk of Pitch Canker spreading to France, particularly to southwestern France where the climate would favor establishment of this disease and where the presence of susceptible species is particularly dense.

Claude Husson, GFPF

To read more about GFPF, follow this link : https://colloque6.inra.fr/gfpf2014

Photo : Visit of a pine forest in Spain with presence of Pitch canker caused by Gibberella circinata

A seminar focused on plant fungus interactions

17-18 November
INRA Nancy-Lorraine Center,
Champenoux

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The Joint Research Unit for Tree-Microorganism Interactions  (IAM – INRA, Nancy-Lorraine / Universite of Lorraine) and the department of Organismic Interactions (Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg, Germany) are co-organizing an interdepartmental workshop on plant fungus interactions.

This workshop will be held on November 17 & 18 and will offer two days of talks and presentations, poster sessions and various social events (a truffle orchard visit, dinner, etc.)

We are expecting fruitful discussions that could lead to future collaborative projects. The scientific program will be divided into three sessions: (i) Signaling, (ii) Effectors, and (iii) Comparative Genomics / Population Genomics.

For more information, please visit the – Seminar home page
Crédit photo : Cora Guennoc – INRA

Conference highlights from the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO)
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The IUFRO international conference entitled “Challenges and Opportunities in Genetics of Five-Needle Pines and Rusts of Forest Trees Research: Conservation, Evolution and Sustainable Management in a Changing Climate” was held in Fort Collins (Colorado, USA) from 15 to 20 June 2014.

The conference brought together for the first time two working groups within the IUFRO network (WP 02.02.15 Breeding and Genetic Resources of Five-Needle Pines & WP 7.02.05 Rusts of Forest Trees) and the Strobusphere group. In total, the conference gathered 105 scientists from around the world (Austria, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, USA, Vietnam).

Topics at the conference focused on advances in genetic resources conservation, genomics, rust resistance, the impacts of climate change and evolutionary dynamics. In addition to two days of plenary and concurrent sessions, participants were invited on three fieldtrips to visit the stunning Rocky Mountains: in southern Wyoming (Pinus flexilis ecosystems); the Rocky Mountain National Park (P. flexilis ecosystems); Mount Goliath and Mount Evans (Pinus aristata ecosystems).

Key topics addressed were:

• Advances in genomics in forest trees (Pinus lambertiana genome) and rusts of forest trees (Cronartium spp and Melampsora spp. genomes)
• Work on rust resistance in forest trees
• The biology, epidemiology, and host-pathogen interactions
• The conservation of genetic resources of five-needle pines
• The impact of climate change on five-needle pines

French research was particularly well represented with five participants from INRA (Nancy-Lorraine & Orleans). Among these were three researchers from the INRA Nancy-Lorraine Center’s Joint Research Unit on Tree/Microorganism Interactions (UMR IAM), thanks to financial support from LabEx ARBRE.

For more information, contact :  P. Frey; pascal.frey@nancy.inra.fr

Labex ARBRE is launching its fourth call for projects. The objective is to provide funding for innovative projects associated with ARBRE’s four thematic axes (integrative biology, functional ecology, wood-material and forest economy), which propose to advance science or present significant valorization potential.  Creation of inter-disciplinary collaborative projects is particularly encouraged.

ARBRE also prioritizes supporting projects linking research and education. Projects which propose to incorporate training and scientific mediation with Labex research unit activities are strongly encouraged.

Deadline to submit proposals : 1 December 2014
by email to :  klett@nancy.inra.fr

The joint research unit on Tree/Microorganism Interactions (UMR IAM) will host its first workshop on oak genome annotation

INRA Nancy-Lorraine Center
5-7 November 2014

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The pedunculate oak Quercus robur genome was recently successfully sequenced by the joint research unit BIOGECO at the INRA Pierroton Center in collaboration with GENOSCOPE (CEA – Evry) and several French teams working on the ANR project GENOAK. This sequencing represents a first for the oak genome, an important event in forest genomics, for an important tree species in French forestry research.

This upcoming oak genome annotation workshop hosted by IAM will gather 30 French and foreign scientists studying genes of interest within the genome related to specific characters of the pedunculate oak (or French oak). The purpose of this workshop is to provide these concerned scientists with the necessary tools and methods to validate some 50,000 genes identified in this genome through the use of bioinformatics techniques (such as image and signal processing). The joint research unit on Tree-Microorganism Interactions, with support from LabEx ARBRE to organize this workshop, will draw on its expertise in eukaryotic genome annotation to contribute to future analysis of this genome.

To read more about the project GENOAK : https://w3.pierroton.inra.fr/QuercusPortal/index.php?p=OAK_GENOME_SEQUENCING

Contact : Christophe Plomion (plomion@pierroton.inra.fr)
Photo credit : Antoine Kremer – INRA Pierroton