Highlights of the 2023 Plant and Animal Genome Conference #PAG30

The Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG 30) took place in San Diego, California from January 13-18 of 2023. The conference covered the most recent developments in Plant and Animal Genomics, with a full program consisting of scientific workshops, plenary speakers, industry workshops, digital tools and resources sessions, posters sessions, and exhibits with community resources and industry related products and services.

After a 2-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Gramene proudly held once again its signature workshop featuring talks by collaborators representing Ensembl Plants, EBI Expression Atlas, Plant Reactome, and Maize ENCODE. In addition, Gramene's PI, Dr. Doreen Ware presented a cross-species analysis in response to nitrate availability between maize and sorghum in the Comparative Genomics session, Andrew Olson gave talks on the Gramene’s PanGenome sites for Maize, Rice, Sorghum and Grapevine in the Gramene workshop, and Gramene Oryza in the IRIC: Rice Informatics for the Global Community session, Marcela K. Tello-Ruiz briefly highlighted Gramene Grapevine at the Grape Genome Initiative session, and Kapeel Chougule discussed pan-genomic approaches to consistent annotation of rice genomes during the Rice as a Model for Genetics, Genomics and Breeding. 

PAG 30 provided an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas and applications for the vision of Gramene and Gramene's PanGenome sites. The importance of working under the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) for data management and using standards has permeated all areas of agricultural research. The conference enabled us to identify collections of population data and coordinate data sharing with germplasm centers like GRIN Global. Members of the Gramene Team are actively engaged in the AgBioData Consortium Working Groups for 1) Genome Assembly and Annotation Nomenclature, 2) Genotype-Phenotype Data, and 3) Standards for Genetic Variation Data and presented progress highlights in the AgBioData workshop. 

Posters for Gramene Oryza and Plant Reactome were also presented at PAG 30, and are available for download from Gramene’s FTP site. The Gramene and Gramene’s pansites were also represented at the AgBioData community booth exhibit and fliers may be downloaded from Gramene’s Outreach FTP.

We believe this was one of Gramene's most successful workshops with not only record attendance but also very engaging and interactive participants. The community booth exhibit was also a platform to meet face-to-face with some of our users, spread the word about available data and resources in the Gramene sites and expand the user base. We were also successful in engaging with representatives and principal investigators for other bioinformatics resources, and strengthening existing collaborations or developing new relationships.

A major target for the project moving forward is the identification of genetic variation data sets currently in use by the community. Take the survey “Got SNPs?” to help us track additional genetic variation datasets in plants!

Do you have omics data that you would like to share via Gramene’s infrastructure? Or would you like to schedule a virtual training session for your institution to learn everything that Gramene and Gramene’s PanGenome sites have to offer?  Please feel free to contact us via our feedback form.

We are updating Gramene’s mailing list and always welcome new subscribers! 

The “Gramene - Exploring Function through Comparative Genomics and Network Analysis” project was funded by NSF-IOS-1127112 through May 2021, and currently by USDA-ARS-8062-21000-041-00D, as are the Gramene PanGenome sites. “MaizeCode - An Initial Analysis of Functional Elements in the Maize Genome” was a project funded by NSF-IOS-1445025. The “CIBR:BBSRC: PanOryza: Globally coordinated genomes, proteomes and pathways for rice” is funded by NSF-DBI-2029854.