In this talk I will discuss the use of monkeyflowers to probe the genetic and molecular bases of floral trait variation among species, to characterize the developmental mechanisms of pattern formation, and to test the adaptive significance of floral trait variation in the evolution of pollination syndromes.
The Bob. B. Buchanan Lecture honors Professor Bob B. Buchanan, a longtime faculty member in the department. Professor Buchanan did undergraduate work at Emory and Henry College and obtained a Ph.D. in Microbiology from Duke University. After completing postdoctoral research with the late Professor Jesse C. Rabinowitz in the Department of Biochemistry, Buchanan joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1963. He is known for his contributions to microbiology, photosynthesis and plant biochemistry.
Speakers are typically young investigators on the way to achieving prominence in plant biology. They are selected by postdoctoral scholars in the Department of Plant & Microbial Biology.
Buchanan Lectures
2001 Peter Schrümann
2001 Kenneth Cline
2002 Henry Daniell
2003 Julian Schroeder
2005 Jim Carrington
2005 Steve Kay
2007 Savithramma Dinesh-Kumar
2008 Jen Sheen
2009 Steve Jacobsen
2010 Dominique Bergmann
2011 Xuemei Chen
2012 Cyril Zipfel
2013 Thomas Lahaye
2014 Kelly Craven
2015 Sam Hazen
2016 Jing-Ke Weng
2017 Yannick Jacob
2018 Nidhi Rawat
2019 Elizabeth Sattely
2020 Patrick Keeling
2021 Siobhan Braybrook
2022 David Nelson
2023 Yaowu Yuan
Upcoming Buchanan Endowed Lectures
There are no upcoming events, please check back for future listings.
For a schedule of all Plant & Microbial Biology events, seminars, and lectures visit our calendar.
Past Buchanan Endowed Lectures
David Nelson: Buchanan Lecture: How plants sense and respond to karrikins, a class of growth regulators in smoke
Almost two decades ago, karrikins were identified in smoke as germination stimulants of plants that emerge after fire. Karrikins have since been shown to affect many aspects of plant development, putatively because they mimic an unknown endogenous hormone. I will present our current understanding of how karrikins are perceived by plants and how karrikin signaling is attenuated through feedback control mechanisms.
Siobhan Braybrook: What do walls have to do with it? Multiscale implications for growth and survival
Carbohydrate-based cell walls show up all over the tree of life, including in several multicellular lineages. In this talk, we will explore how cell walls are central to the growth and survival of organisms in two groups: plants and brown algae (seaweeds).
Patrick Keeling: Buchanan Lecture: Coral, Photosynthesis, and the origin of Apicomplexan Parasites
Patrick John Keeling is a biologist and professor in the Department of Botany at the University of British Columbia. His research investigates the phylogeny, genomics and molecular evolution of protists and his work has led to numerous advances in assembling the eukaryotic tree of life.
View video below:
Elizabeth Sattely: Buchanan Lecture: Discovery and Engineering of Plant Chemistry for Plant and Human Health
Elizabeth Sattely is an Associate Professor and HHMI Investigator in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford and a Stanford ChEM-H Faculty Fellow. She also serves as an Honorary Adjunct Staff Scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Science. Dr. Sattely completed her graduate training at Boston College in organic chemistry and her postdoctoral studies in biochemistry at Harvard Medical...
Nidhi Rawat: Buchanan Lecture: Fusarium graminearum: Can we really outsmart the sly pathogen?
Nidhi Rawat. Genetic resistance to pathogens is the most crucial strategy to overcome this challenge. Using Fusarium graminearum as a model, we are investigating the broad-spectrum strategies that the plants use to resist the pathogen spread.
Jing-Ke Weng: Buchanan Lecture: Mechanistic Basis of Metabolic Evolution in Plants
Jing-Ke Weng has broad interests in understanding the origin and evolution of plant specialized metabolism at enzyme, pathway, and systems levels, as well as how plants exploit discrete small molecules to interact with their surrounding biotic and abiotic environments. Their work in plant metabolic evolution impacts a fundamental question in biology – how do complex traits evolve in a Darwinian...
Sam Hazen: Buchanan Lecture: Daily Rhythms and the Transcriptional Regulation of Plant Biomass Accumulation
Sam Hazen. Daily Rhythms and the Transcriptional Regulation of Plant Biomass Accumulation