Over 500 Leading Maize Scientists and Researchers Attended the Maize Genetics meeting, Gramene Team Presented Workshop

The 65th Annual Maize Genetics Cooperation meeting took place from March 16th to the 19th of 2023 in St. Louis, Missouri.  The conference covered the most recent scientific and technical advances in maize genetics. This conference brought together over 500 leading maize scientists and researchers, several exhibits from our industry partners, 7 workshops and nearly 300 posters. Gramene presented a workshop that promoted the database’s versatile search and visualization interface for the over 120 genomes housed on the website, with a focus on how researchers could identify genetic variation within genetic regions for the purposes of functional characterization through mutant analysis. Additionally, MaizeGDB presented an excellent  tutorial on MaizeMining data warehouse. 

Other plenary speakers included Damon Lisch who discussed the roles of transposable elements in maize function and Seung Yon Ree who lectured on thermoadaptation for desert extremophiles. An important lecture on advocating and advancing historically and currently under-represented groups within the sciences was given by renowned plant biologist MariaElena Zavala, of California State University-Northridge. The keynote lecture was given by this year’s McClintock Prize winner, the inimitable Virginia Walbot, who gave a sweeping seminar about the developmental biology of maize pollen and her continual usage of bleeding edge technology to push the boundaries of this field 

Other highlights of this symposium included over 30 insightful seminars from university and government scientists, the engaging and collaboration-building poster sessions with scientists at all stages of their careers, and the community building events of games and trivia in the evening.