Upcoming Conference: the 2^nd International Conference on Plant Metablism

Through metabolic activities, plants make numerous compounds that not only provide human beings with food, medicine and industrial material but also function as a weapon to defend invaders such as pathogens and insects and as a language to communicate with neighbors and other organisms. The rapid development of modern life sciences and analytic technologies of compounds have provided us unprecedented opportunities to dissect plant metabolism and its regulatory mechanism. The significant progresses in dissecting metabolic pathways and their networks have been achieved in recent years. Convergence of the new knowledge will help further our understanding of plant metabolism and develop new technology for improvement of crops and food quality, and ultimately benefit for the human life in the future.

Having successfully organized the first international conference on plant metabolism in 2008, the second conference will be held from June 30 to July 3rd, 2011 in Qingdao, Shandong Province of China. The theme of the conference is “Plant Metabolism and Modern Agriculture”. Many leading scientists in the plant metabolism world will present their latest research in the areas of plant metabolisms, such as biosynthesis of terpenes, vitamins, phenols, pigments and cell walls, carbon and nitrogen metabolism, metabolomics and metabolic engineering. Some talks will be selected from submitted abstracts. The conference will bring scientists, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students together to share the state of the art knowledge on plant metabolism, and also serve as a forum to develop an interdisciplinary network to promote research on plant metabolism globally.

Updated information on the conference is now available through the conference website at http://www.cspp.cn/2icpm/eindex.asp.