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SEB Conference 2026

Linking Iron Homeostasis and Hypoxia Responses in Arabidopsis thaliana

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SEB Conference 2025

SEB’s Annual Conference is celebrated for creating the perfect composition of research, new discoveries and collaborative connections. Be creative and innovative by exchanging ideas and knowledge with masters of biology from all over the world.

SEB’s Annual Conference is celebrated for creating the perfect composition of research, new discoveries, and collaborative connections. Be creative and innovative by exchanging ideas and knowledge with masters of biology from all over the world.

**This year’s theme is “Resilience.”**

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Each year at our Annual Conference, we honour George Parker Bidder and Harold Woolhouse with two key Plenary Lectures. These lectures, along with the Cell Biology and OED Plenary Lecture, are given by scientists prominent in their field and are nominated by the committees of their respective sections.<br>

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SEB’s Annual Conference is celebrated for creating the perfect composition of research, new discoveries and collaborative connections. Be creative and innovative by exchanging ideas and knowledge with masters of biology from all over the world. 

Turbulence is ubiquitous in the natural environment, yet little is understood about how flapping fliers maintain flight control in variable flows. Unlocking the characteristics of avian gust response may lead improved flow-control technologies for a rapidly evolving aviation industry. With this aim, we investigated gust responses in pigeons, Columba livia, flying in a custom-built avian wind tunnel that can be operated in level or tilted configurations. Dual-vein gust generators were used to produce gusts of different lengths and magnitudes during flapping and gliding flight. Pigeon responses to gusts were characterised using seven Motion Capture cameras to record wing and body motions at 200 Hz. Tests were conducted over a period of a month and the resulting data were analysed using a custom-built Principal Component Analysis. The principal components differed depending on whether birds were (i) gliding or flapping and (ii) exposed to singular or continuous gusts. Initial analyses were unable to identify differences in gust responses according to the gust length and magnitude. While it may be that much greater sample size are needed, our initial results suggest that birds are unlikely to rely on singular gust response modes.

Flying in a turbulent world: how do pigeons respond to gusts?

Hybrid dynamical systems are useful for modeling legged locomotion, yet proving existence and regularity of periodic gaits remains difficult. This study analyzes a one-dimensional hybrid reduction of the SLIP model for human running under constant angular velocity during stance, retaining full leg compression and a time-periodic gravitational potential.
Stance dynamics include a linear spring with stiffness k, rest length l0, mass m, gravity g, and a sinusoidally varying potential; flight dynamics is parabolic. The resulting system is examined via oscillation theory, Poincaré maps, and intersection theory for conics, then numerically simulated and fitted to experimental data.
The main theorem gives necessary and sufficient conditions for existence and multiplicity of 1-periodic smooth solutions continuous across touchdown and takeoff. A one-parameter family of C0 periodic solutions exists for all parameters, while a unique smooth C1 solution occurs only if ω2<k/m and ω2≠k/(2m); no C2 solutions exist. Model fits to human center-of-mass data in treadmill and overground running yield relative L∞L∞ errors below 10%.
Results show that high stance frequency relative to leg-spring frequency induces non-smooth, collisional transitions. Despite relaxing small-compression and fixed-roude assumptions, the model yields explicit expressions for biomechanical quantities and accurately captures experimental motion. Biologically, smoothness constraints restrict feasible stiffness–frequency combinations, explaining observed gait patterns and offering guidance for robotic controller design.

Sharp conditions for smooth periodic solutions to a hybrid dynamical system for human running

Pennation is often dismissed as a simple cosine penalty: tilt fibers, lose force, end of story. Yet pennate muscles dominate where high forces matter most. Why? Because pennation is not a flaw — it’s a design strategy. Angled fibers trade projection for packing: more fibers in parallel equal more sarcomeres that produce force.
Misinterpretations of physiological cross-sectional area (PCSA) have shrouded this picture for decades. PCSA is anatomical; functional cross-sectional area (FCSA) is mechanical. Confusing the two hides the real advantage of pennation. Therefore, we introduce pennation mechanical advantage — a simple geometric metric that reveals how muscle shape amplifies force for a given volume. This clears up the paradox: pennation doesn’t weaken muscles; it gears them up.
However, pennation angle does not fully govern the force landscape. Real muscles comprise fibers spanning a distribution of lengths, not a single idealized value. These distributions remain largely unknown in vivo and are rarely integrated into muscle models, despite their critical role in shaping force–length behavior.
This talk reframes muscle architecture as a landscape shaped by geometry and variability, not just a single angle or area. By combining pennation mechanics with fiber length distributions, we uncover what pennate muscles can — and cannot — do. This perspective reframes how we model, measure, and interpret muscle function.

Strong as a Feather: Rethinking Pennation and Fiber Length in Muscle Design

Predicting the impacts of climate change on fish and otherectothermic animals requires an understanding of their ability to cope with extreme heat. Although research on thermal tolerance limits in fish is increasingly studied, the underlying physiological mechanisms that determine these limits remain largely unknown. Here, we examined the responses of different organs to an acute temperature challenge to assess tissue-specific variation in thermal tolerance. Isolated preparations of cardiac muscles (ventricle and atrium), white skeletal muscle and smooth muscles (stomach and intestine) from rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) were electrically stimulated in vitro during a temperature ramping protocol. In parallel, whole-animal critical thermal maximum (CTmax ) was measured to relate tissue-level responses to organismal thermal limits. We show that white skeletal muscle was the most temperature sensitive tissue, with only around 10-20% of maximum contraction force remaining at the temperature of whole-animal CTmax . This suggests that skeletal muscle may represent a previously overlooked contributor of thermal tolerance in fishes. Additionally, only two out of fifteen atrium preparations produced spontaneous contractions at temperatures above whole-animal CTmax , suggesting that excitation-contraction coupling in cardiac myocytes is severely impacted at high temperatures. Furthermore, ventricle contractility was strongly dependant on stimulation voltage, thus supporting the prediction of the temperature-dependant deterioration of electrical excitability hypothesis (i.e., electrical excitability of cardiac cells is reduced at elevated temperatures). However, we did not observe the same pattern in skeletal muscles. Together, our findings highlight that both skeletal muscle and cardiac function are key contributors of thermal tolerance limits in fishes.

What Fails First? Tissue-Specific Thermal Sensitivity and the Limits of Heat Tolerance in Fish

Species vulnerability to climate change depends in part on their capacity to evolve in response to increasing heat. Within terrestrial ectotherms, heat tolerance generally corresponds weakly to current climates, which has led many to conclude that this trait is evolutionarily constrained. However, most studies have not accounted for the role of microclimates, potentially obscuring signals of local adaptation. We examined heat tolerance in 95 species of wild bees that varied in nesting behaviour across the latitudinal extent of Australia. Species nest (ground, wooden cavities, or plant stems) micro-climate temperatures predicted heat tolerance evolution, where stem nesters evolved the highest heat tolerances, and ground nesters evolved the lowest heat tolerances due to their ability to evade extreme heat. A moderate level of phylogenetic inertia in heat tolerance was explained by patterns of related species sharing nesting behaviours. This indicated repeated adaptive evolution of similar heat tolerances, rather than strong evolutionary constraints on heat tolerance. Finally, incorporating nesting behaviour into assessments of climate change vulnerability changed the rank order of which species were most at risk. This underscores the need to understand what drives the evolution of heat tolerance across species to better identify the taxa most at risk to climate change.

Nesting behaviour predicts heat tolerance evolution and climate vulnerability in bees

‘Space-for-time’ approaches can help assess the capacity of species to locally adapt and acclimatise to heterogeneous environmental conditions. Fjords make ideal models for such studies, as they form environmental mosaics and isolate populations. Integrating genomics, metabolomics and environmental profiling, we investigated whether copepods (Calanus glacialis) inhabiting fjords spanning a broad Arctic-subarctic latitudinal gradient differ in their response to ocean acidification. Single-nucleotide polymorphism data reveal a clear population genetic structure among copepods from the four studied fjords, positively associated with latitude and seawater temperature. Fjords exhibit contrasting physico-chemical environments, with a wide range of pH, where the southernmost (Lurefjorden, Southern Norway) and northernmost (Billefjorden, Svalbard) fjords present the lowest pH minima. Targeted metabolomics reveals that inter-population variation exists in copepods’ response to acute experimental ocean acidification. In particular, range-edge populations show the greatest metabolomic sensitivity to ocean acidification, correlating with the higher dissolved inorganic carbon content they experience in their fjords. However, the northernmost and southernmost populations utilise different metabolic strategies. At the southern edge, copepods are smaller with higher metabolite levels, and rely predominantly on the citrate cycle. Conversely, copepods from the northern locality are larger and have lower metabolite levels, forcing them to rapidly switch to amino acid catabolism and anaerobiosis. Overall, coupling genomics, environmental profiling and metabolomics phenotyping, we demonstrate that habitat heterogeneity along the Arctic-subarctic gradient makes range-edge populations more sensitive to ocean acidification, consistent with their local adaptation to low seawater pH. Our work pinpoints range-edge populations as priorities for conservation efforts in the future ocean.

Living at the edge: multiomics evidence is consistent with local adaptation to low pH in range-edge populations of a copepod

Efficient regeneration and transformation remain major bottlenecks in Cannabis sativa, limiting the application of modern plant biotechnology tools. One promising strategy to overcome this recalcitrance is the controlled expression of morphogenic regulators; however, their constitutive overexpression often results in developmental abnormalities. Here, we aimed to develop efficient, tightly controlled expression systems that allow the conditional activation of morphogenic genes.
We first conducted a comparative evaluation of widely used chemically inducible systems (GVG, VGE, XVE, and OpOn) in Nicotiana benthamiana using their respective inducers. Various promoter–reporter combinations were tested to assess induction strength, background leakiness, and responsiveness. Reporter activity (GFP/DsRed) was analyzed via fluorescence microscopy and quantitatively measured using Tecan plate reader assays. The results revealed clear differences in induction efficiency and basal expression among the systems.
As an alternative to multiple independent chemically inducible promoters, we engineered a Bean yellow dwarf virus (BeYDV) geminivirus-based In Plant Activation (INPACT) cassette designed to undergo Rep/RepA-mediated circularization, resulting in episomal amplification and strong transgene activation. Functional validation in N. benthamiana and C. sativa confirmed circularization-dependent reporter expression through fluorescence imaging.
Currently, we are replacing reporter genes in both inducible and INPACT platforms with morphogenic regulators to enable controlled, high-level expression aimed at stimulating regeneration while minimising pleiotropic effects. This ongoing work seeks to establish modular and tunable expression systems as foundational tools to improve transformation and regeneration efficiency in Cannabis sativa, supporting future applications in functional genomics and metabolic engineering applications.

Optimization of Inducible Gene Expression and Controlled Regeneration in Cannabis sativa.

Plant robustness to pathogens may be elicited by activators of plant immunity. Acibenzolar-S-methyl (ASM), a synthetic analog of salicylic acid (SA), is a long-standing plant resistance inducer capable of activating systemic acquired resistance.ASM effectively protects apple plants againstErwinia amylovora(the fire blight bacterium) orVenturia inaequalis(the apple scab fungus). However, we recently showed (10.1111/pce.70256) that pre-exposing apple plants to a short heatwave (max. 35°C) strongly impedes the protective effect of ASM against both pathogens, compromising plant robustness under challenging environmental conditions. Contrary to Arabidopsis, we found no evidence that SA metabolism is thermosusceptible in apple. Moreover, we identify no major alterations in the ASM-induced transcriptional activation of known defense genes upon heatwave. Here, we further investigated whether metabolic regulation could underlie the loss of ASM-induced plant robustness at high temperature. Untargeted metabolomic profiling of leaf extracts revealed more than 1,000 metabolic features, among which a subset displayed distinct accumulation patterns associated with temperature regime, ASM treatment, and their interaction. Focusing on features affected by the temperature × ASM interaction, we identified one purine whose accumulation correlates with disease susceptibility in ASM-treated plants exposed to high temperature. We explored to what extent this purine may serve as a substrate for the pathogen’s growth or virulence. Our current findings rather suggest that part of the purine enzymatic machinery is blocked by ASM at high temperature, which drives pleiotropic effects on plant immunity. Our unpublished results highlight metabolism as a key for plant robustness to multiple biotic and abiotic stresses.

Erosion of elicited robustness to pathogens through metabolic vulnerability at high temperature in apple plants

Beneficial fungi of the Trichoderma genus are widely used as biological control agents (BCAs) in crops because they can promote plant growth, enhance immunity, and increase tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. However, we still lack a mechanistic understanding of how the interaction between beneficial microbes and plants confers plant robustness to diverse stresses. We recently discovered that Trichoderma induces robustness to pathogens and heat stress in the non-vascular plant Marchantia polymorpha. These results suggest that potentially all land plants might benefit from interactions with the fungus Trichoderma. In addition, we observed that Trichoderma directly antagonize plant bacterial pathogens from the Pseudomonas genus, suggesting that Trichoderma may exerts direct and indirect biocontrol abilities, activating plant defenses. Like other fungi, Trichoderma secretes a myriad of molecules during the interaction with flowering plants, including cell-wall-degrading enzymes and metabolites that may modulate plant defenses and/or interfere with the microbiome, indirectly contributing to robustness by limiting pathogen colonization. To understand the molecular basis for Trichoderma-induced plant robustness, we will exploit machine learning and comparative multiomics including novel datasets on the bryophyte Marchantia and the eudicot Arabidopsis inoculated or not with Trichoderma and subsequently challenged with a bacterial pathogen or heat stress. Untargeted metabolomics (LC-MS/MS) and advanced data analysis tools will facilitate the identification of candidate fungal metabolites involved in plant robustness. Our work provides a mechanistic framework to understand how beneficial fungi modulate plant signaling pathways conferring plant robustness across evolutionary lineages.

Decoding the mechanisms underlying Trichoderma-induced robustness across land plants

Epigenetic reprogramming is increasingly recognised as a regulator of plant immune memory, yet the underlying molecular pathways remain poorly defined. Although genetic mutant lines have advanced the field considerably, their constitutive nature limits the analysis of dynamic and reversible epigenetic underlying this memory. Here, we employed complementary epi-mutagenic tools to assess the contribution of DNA (de)methylation to immune memory against plant pathogens. We generated Arabidopsis lines harbouring an inducibleAtROS1construct, enabling transient and dose-dependent activation of this DNA demethylase. EctopicAtROS1induction resulted in immune memory against biotrophic pathogens, which persisted for at least one week post-induction but was erased within two weeks. This transient memory coincided with reduced small RNA abundance and non-CG methylation across chromosome arms, both of which gradually returned to baseline levels over time. In contrast, pericentromeric regions displayed persistent increases in these epigenetic marks, which outlasted the memory phase and involved regulation by CLSY3. Integration of methylome, small RNA, and transcriptome sequencing revealed novelcis-regulated targets within chromosome arms that are antagonistically controlled by RNA-directed DNA methylation and AtROS1. Notably, we uncovered one epi-locus in the promoter of theNPR1gene, a key activator of salicylic-acid-dependent immunity. Using the SunTag-dCas9-TET1 system for targeted demethylation, we demonstrate that loss of DNA methylation at this epi-locus enhancesNPR1expression and improves plant pathogen resistance. Collectively, our results establish dynamic DNA methylation changes in the chromosome arms as the main driver of transient plant immune memory and highlight opportunities for epigenetic engineering strategies to enhance crop protection.

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