IN THIS ISSUE News from the FESPB 2008 congress held in Tampere, Finland Presenting the new names leading SPPS Announcing the Plant ROS 2009 conference in Helsinki Organic or GMO? Scandinavian research institute: Plastid AS, University of Stavanger, Norway BROWSE ISSUES NEWS FROM PHYSIOLOGIA PLANTARUM Published monthly on behalf of SPPS by Wiley-Blackwell. Comforting proteins A dehydrin protein from Rhododendron plays a key role in freezing tolerance due to protection from cellular dehydration caused by extracellular freezing. Rajeev Arora and co-workers from Iowa State University have shown that purified RcDhn5-encoded acidic SK2 type dehydrin can protect enzyme activity against dehydration in in viro assays. When the gene was constitutively expressed in Arabidopsis, the transgenic plants exhibited increased freezing tolerance withour prior cold acclimation. With cold acclimation, however, the effect was less pronounced. This is apparently due to dilution of the Rhododendron dehydrin by less effective native dehydrins. Read full article free: Peng et al. (December 2008) Physiologia Plantarum 134: 583-597 NEWS IN BRIEF FROM OTHER JOURNALS Aphids thrive on biofuels Source: Landis et al. (23 December 2008) PNAS 105: 20552-20557 Pattern-creating microtubules Source: Hamant et al (12 December 2008) Science 322: 1650-1655 Sponsored links:				Presenting the new names leading SPPS   Professor Jaakko Kangasjärvi is the new President of SPPS. Photo courtesy of University of Helsinki. The general assembly of SPPS was held in connection with the FESPB Congress, and the new SPPS council was elected. Prof. Jaakko Kangasjärvi from University of Helsinki was elected new President of SPPS. He graduated in plant physiology at the University of Minnesota. After returning to Finland, he has held positions at the universities in Kuopio, Turku and Helsinki. His primary interest is genetic regulation of programmed cell death and defence responses, and how this regulation is influenced by hormonal signalling and reactive oxygen species. The members of the new SPPS council are: Prof. Jaakko Kangasjärvi President, Finland Assoc. Prof. Tom Hamborg Nielsen Vice President, Denmark Dr. Anna Kärkönen Secretary General, Finland Prof. Kurt Fagerstedt Treasurer, Finland Prof. Lisbeth Jonsson Journal responsible, Sweden Prof. Elina Oksanen Member, Finland Prof. Simon G. Møller Member, Norway You can find more information about SPPS at our homepage.
Design and technical solution © 2004 Palmgren kommunikation. SPPS Newsletter is edited by Gorm Palmgren. All articles - unless otherwise stated - are written by Gorm Palmgren.