Plant Cell Atlas Initiative Workshop

Plant Cell Atlas Initiative Workshop

Carnegie Institute for Science, Stanford, California
May 15, May 22, and June 2, 2020

Objectives

This workshop brought together a community of interdisciplinary scientists to brainstorm broad directions the Plant Cell Atlas (PCA) Initiative should take, challenges it might face, and ways to prepare for those challenges. The workshop featured invited talks and breakout sessions focused on technical challenges, community wants and needs, and the conceptual goals of the PCA.

Overall Goals:

Build a community that shares the vision of this initiative and works collaboratively to develop the PCA.
Solicit input from the community about critical questions such as:
1. What information gaps are most urgent?
2. What levels of data quality and validation will optimize the utility of this resource?
3. What are the benefits of this initiative to science and society?
Discuss data standards, data sharing policies, and efforts to build the PCA into a scientific resource.
Identify and discuss the challenges and bottlenecks that this project will face.
Develop ideas and identify emerging tools and experimental methodologies that will contribute to a high-resolution, high-throughput characterization of localization, interaction, and functional attributes of cellular proteins.
Develop white papers and a set of recommendations.

You can find recordings of the talks and Q&A sessions for each day on the Plant Cell Atlas YouTube Channel. Links to individual talks and Q&A sessions can be found in the agenda.

Agenda

8:00 – 8:10 AM	Introduction
8:10 – 8:30 AM	Session 1 Talks: Vision for Plant Cell Atlas – Biological questions that will be enabled Dominique Bergmann (Stanford University) Plant development and cell fate determination Bergmann PCA Slides Uta Paszkowski (University of Cambridge) Plant-microbe interactions Liwen Jiang (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Organelle biogenesis Martin Jonikas (Princeton University) Organelle and plant engineering
8:30 – 8:45 AM	Talks Q&A Session
8:45 – 9:30 AM	Breakout Session 1: 1. Scientific challengesWhat are the biggest open questions in plant cellular organization and function, development, physiology, and metabolism today? 2. How would a comprehensive Plant Cell Atlas of protein function, molecular locations, dynamics and interactions help address these questions? 3. What types of data should be included in a comprehensive Plant Cell Atlas? 4. How should efforts be prioritized in terms of species, cell and data types? 5. What new questions will we be asking if we had a comprehensive Plant Cell Atlas?
9:30 – 10:00 AM	Rejoin and Report-out

8:00 – 8:10 AM	Introduction
8:10 – 8:30 AM	Session 2 Talks: Tools and Techniques for PCA Alexander Jones (Sainsbury Laboratory ) Emerging live imaging techniques & tools Tess Branon (University of California, Berkeley) Emerging proteomics techniques & tools Markita Landry (University of California, Berkeley) * Emerging plant transformation techniques & tools* Becky Bart (Danforth Plant Science Center) Emerging homologous recombination techniques & tools
8:30 – 8:45 AM	Talks Q&A Session
8:45 – 9:30 AM	Breakout Session 2: Technology 1. What are the key existing technologies and tools needed to enable a comprehensive Plant Cell Atlas? 2. What technologies on the horizon (or beyond) should be developed? 3. What are the biggest technical challenges/bottlenecks and how might they be overcome?
9:30 – 10:00 AM	Rejoin and Report-out

8:00 – 8:10 AM	Introduction
8:10 – 8:30 AM	Session 3 Talks: Broader Impacts, Infrastructure, and Community Building Nicholas Provart (University of Toronto) Visualizing the PCA George Bassel (University of Warwick) Tissue modeling Amy Marshall-Colón (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) Crop engineering Drew Endy (Stanford University) Synthetic biology and bio-based economy
8:30 – 8:45 AM	Talks Q&A Session
8:45 – 9:30 AM	Breakout Session 3: 1. Broader Impacts + Community BuildingWho should be stakeholders/members of the PCA community? 2. What should be the main purpose and goal of the PCA? 3. How will PCA impact plant science and society?
9:30 – 9:55 AM	Rejoin and Report-out
9:55 – 10:00 AM	Closing Remarks by Eric D. Isaacs and Sue Rhee