Vergangene SymposienCOS-Symposium 2017

 How do organisms process signals originating from their immediate environment and respond with specific physiological and behavioral responses that maximize their fitness?

The key to the 2017 Symposium is that plants and animals have evolved from common ancestors from which they inherited similar biological machineries in their cells, but they interact with their environment in very different ways. Plants usually must stay in one place (except for their seeds and pollen) and thus must either tolerate whatever challenges their environment presents or plastically adjust their phenotypes. By contrast, many (but not all) animals can move and use behavior to escape from or respond to environmental challenges. We expect that discussions on shared conceptual approaches employed by invited scientists, most particularly with respect to the most prototypical molecular bases to environmental responses, will motivate further perspectives on evolutionary convergences in signal transduction and integration.

Speakers: Chris Bowler (Paris), Tiago Branco (Cambridge), Marieke Essers (Heidelberg), Nick Foulkes (Karlsruhe), Rainer Hedrich (Würzburg), Jonathan Jones (Norwich) (The EMBO Keynote Lecture) , Charalambos Kyriacou (Leicester), Paloma Mas (Barcelona), Anne Pfeiffer, Lucia Prieto-Godino (Lausanne), Anke Steppuhn (Berlin), Aurelio Teleman (Heidelberg)