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Seminars & Conferences

Seminars and conferences abstracts

  • 9th October 2016, Univeristy of Warwick, Professor David Bannerman, "Everything you wanted to know about the the hippocampus but were afraid to ask!"

On Friday the 9th of October Professor David Bannerman, from Oxford University, was invited by the Faculty of Science to do a seminar on "Everything you wanted to know about the hippocampus but were afraid to ask!”. His talk aimed to explain the role of the hippocampus. In fact, there is a lot of evidence showing that the hippocampus plays a role in associative learning and especially in spatial navigation and spatial memory. Experiments using mice with hippocampus lesion show that hippocampus loss is correlated with poor performance in completing spatial memory tasks.

But Professor Bannerman has pointed out that hippocampus has also long been associated with aspects of emotionality and, in particular, with anxiety. So behaviours observed from hippocampus loss or non-functional hippocampus may not be only due to a loss of spatial memory. Indeed, recent experiments use a spatial discrimination and a non-spatial discrimination beacon task in water maze and task performances on both tests are compared with a control mice and a genetically modified mice with non-functional hippocampus. In conclusion of these tests it has been proposed that the hippocampus has also a crucial role when organisms face an ambiguous situation or overlapping memories.

  • 19th October 2016, University of Warwick, Professor Tiina Roose, multiscale image basedmodelling of nutrient uptake

On Monday the 19th of October Professor Tiina Roose, from the University of Southampton, was invited by the School of Life Sciences to do a seminar on multiscale image based modelling of nutrient uptake. His talk aimed to state the art of rhizosphere imaging and to explain how they incorporate these into soil/plant interactions modelling. The most recent method used to image the root system in the soil is micro- focus X-ray Computed Tomography imaging. It is a non-destructive method allowing three-dimensions visualisation with a spatial resolution up to 60 μm. We can see soil mineral linked by mycelium. Professor Tiina Roose uses this method to visualise, quantify and assess root/fertiliser interactions of plants in crop system over time. She is particularly interested in root hair function as they can penetrate soil micropores and dominate phosphorus uptake, a limiting nutrient.

Thanks to the information extracted from CT imaging, she can design simulation models predicting nutrient uptake over time. These models are more accurate than analytic models because they are image based model. So they take in account the complexity of the root hair system and the plant/soil interactions whereas analytic models use idealising homogenous root hair system.

  • 21st October 2016, University of Warwick, Professor Etienne Low-Decarie, "Community adaptation to initially lethal conditions"

On Wednesday the 21th of October Professor Etienne Low-Decarie, from the University of Essex, was invited by the School of Life Sciences to do a seminar on Community adaptation to initially lethal conditions. His talk aimed to explain the evolutionary response of organisms in extreme environment. He starts with the statement that microorganisms are ubiquitous on Earth but mapping microorganism on a global scale is complex. Extreme environments present local microhabitat for organism with limited dispersal. The question is what is the cost of adaptation in extreme environment. From his experiment we can see that there is a very little cost of the capacity to grow for the ability to grow in basic, acid and high salt environment comparing to the ability to grow in benign environment. He stressed that enriched environment community differ from source community. Besides, basic and saline environment lead to similar community. So there is a low cost of latent capacity to grow at extreme conditions.

When you put a community in a lethal environment some organisms are adapted to the lethal condition and increase in frequency. This phenomenon is called evolutionary rescue. Dispersion and diversity allow rescue after landscape degradation. And, from experiments, it appears that communities remain diverse even after selection. But rescue are more probable if it happens prior to correlated stress.

  • 30th October 2016, University of Warwick, Professor Etienne Anna Amtmann, plant responses to nutrient and water shortage

On Friday the 30th of October Professor Etienne Anna Amtmann, from the University of Glasgow, was invited by the School of Life Sciences to do a seminar on plant responses to nutrient and water shortage. His talk aimed to explain how the plant perceives soil nutrient content and soil water content. Plant responses can be observed on different scale. Professor Anna Amtmann had made growth the same plant in different soil. These soils were different only in terms of nutrient content and water content. She played with nitrate, phosphate and potassium soil rate. And we have seen that nutrient content as well as water content control the root system morphology. It appears that the main factor regulating the root hair and the main root growth if the soil nutrients balance rather than a specific nutrient.

Besides, these results give an evidence of plant stress signalisation. Consequently, she was able to make a model for fast and accurate measurement of Arabidopsis Root system architecture. Then she looked at nutrient response genes at the relative transcript level. At this scale we can see the nutrient signalling pathways in the plant. This method allowed her also to give proofs about memory specification. Memory specification is specific tissue expression of genes under pressure.

  • 31st March 2016, Syngenta R&D, Dr Alastair Leake, the Allerton project at the Game and Wildlife Conservatory Trust

On Thursday the 31st of March 2016, Dr Alastair Leake, head of the Allerton project at the Game and Wildlife Conservatory Trust, visited the International Research and Development Centre of Syngenta in the context of the Site Science Seminar. His talk was titled ‘Reconciling Increased Food Production with Increased Environmental protection’. The aim of the Allerton project is to have a better understanding of the relationship between resource management and the environment and to integrate nature protection into food production. He gave evidence on how songbird abundance index decreased over time in the UK while wheat yield increased due to the use of pesticide. In 1992, the farmland bird recovery program promoted the creation of habitat to increase nesting site with extra food in wintertime combined with pest control. Following the setting up of these habitats we can see that it had an impact on both songbird abundance and yields as the first one recovers from its initial state (before intensive agriculture) and crop yields show higher performance than without these habitats. So, these data allow us to say that intensive farming can lead to increased biodiversity.