PCP lab @ ICAR 2013, Sydney

Matt has been invited to speak in the abiotic stress session at the International Conference on Arabidopsis Research to be held in June in Sydney.

PCP lab @ IWPMB

A strong attendance from the PCP lab at one of our major conferences. Now in its sixteenth installment the International Workshop in Plant Membrane Biology will be held in Japan in late March 2013.

Sam Henderson, Jiaen Qiu and Bo Xu will be presenting posters, and Sunita Ramesh is giving a talk and a poster.

Matt is chairing a workshop session and talking.

Thanks to the GWRDC for supporting Sam's travel, and the GRDC and IWPMB for supporting Jiaen and Weasley's trip.

Hydroponics made easy

Our protocol paper outlining how to make an adaptable and versatile hydroponics system useful for many downstream assays has just been published online at Plant Methods, http://www.plantmethods.com/content/9/1/4 . We designed it for use with microeclectrode techniques and the LiCOR whole plant chamber for photosytnthesis measurements but it is very useful for any kind of physiological or molecular assay as the whole shoot and root can be accessed at any stage.

The real advantage of this particular technique is the ease of handling the plants throughout the growth, and the compatibility with many physiological assays. The paper contains many tips and tricks for getting good plant growth in the lab in general, including solution design and macros for measuring growth from images of the plants. The technique is useful for other plants too.

In the first week of being online the paper was viewed over 1000 times and is currently ranked second in terms of impact as measured by altmetrics for all Plant Methods papers, first for papers of a similar age. 

Here is a video that accompanies the paper, outlining the technique.

Go8 China-Australia Fellow

Matt Gilliham received one of 16 nationally awarded Go8 Fellowships to help facilitate collaboration with leading Chinese laboratories.

He visited Beijing. China from 16th-24th November, and it was a very enjoyable and productive visit. During his visit he gave presentations and discussed projects of mutual interest.

New collaborations with 3 laboratories have been establish and are likely to involve exchange of
students and staff between the China and Australia in the near future.

These collaborations are with:

Professor Lijuan Qiu, Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Agricultural Academy of Sciences
(Salt tolerance in soybean)

Professor Lai-hua Liu, China Agricultural University
(Plant Glutamate Receptors)

Professor Wenhao Zhang, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences
(Plant aluminium tolerance)

He also snuck in a visit to the Great Wall...photos to follow.

2012 SA Tall Poppy Award

Matthew accepting his award from
the South Australian Governor
Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce.

Dr Matthew Gilliham was named as a SA Tall Poppy of Science at a ceremony at Government House. This is one of eight awards that recognise the State's best early career researchers. For more details see this blog from the Waite Research Institute.

The Tall Poppy campaign, established by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science (AIPS), promotes public awareness of Australia's intellectual achievements. These awards acknowledge outstanding work by early career researchers and the significance of their research to the broader community.