Agenda and Minutes 3-23-10

POC meeting, Date: March 23, 2010 Webex Conference Call

Items from last week's discussion:

1. Complete discussion of gametophyte, sporophyte and whole plant.

Does it make sense to have gametophyte and sporophyte be part_of whole plant? That way everything that is part of them, will automatically be part of whole plant. They are currently siblings, common is_a children of plant structures. Can one sibling term be a part_of another sibling???

Comments: BS: I do not see anything wrong with this.

gametophyte

proposed def'n: A plant structure that arises through meiosis and may produce gametes by mitosis (POC conf call, 3-16-10)

sporophyte

proposed def'n: A plant structure that is a product of fertilization and produces spores through meiosis.(POC conf call, 3-16-10)

Comment: the gametophyte arises from the product of meiosis (the spore)

whole plant

proposed def'n: A plant structure which is a whole organism (from POC meeting in Ithaca, Dec 09)

On the conference calls on Feb 16th and 23rd, we had fairly extensive discussions of the functionality of keeping gametophyte and sporophyte as siblings to whole plant.

We agreed that our guiding principles should be:

• have general terms for all structures that would be part_of whole plant

A few examples of whole plant are embryo and seed.

2. cardinal organ part and collective organ

definitions finalized?

Ramona and Laurel moved a group of terms so they are now children of these two structures. These include all the terms that don't have is_a parents and are appropriate, plus a few others (see below:)

Note: The existing part_of relationships were retained except as noted below. These have been posted on SF for comments.

a. new children of cardinal organ part

• antiraphe (definition is not clear. Is it part of the ovary or the funicle?)

• fruit (is a fruit an organ?) MAG: fruit fits our definition of a plant organ

• hypanthium (made part_of receptacle instead of part_of flower)

• leaf lamina margin

• leaf lamina base

• leaf rachis (is_a stalk)

• organ margin

• peduncle

• pulvinus (currently is_a organ)

• raphe (removed part_of link to ovary, because it is part of the funicle that is attached to the ovary, not part of the ovary)

• receptacle (or is it an organ?)

• stalk (moved from is_a organ)

b. new children of collective plant structure:

• floral bract

• inflorescence bract (were children of both plant organ and bract (which is_a organ). Deleted is_a relationships to plant organ and kept under bract).

New terms. Posted on SourceForge tracker for comments.

3. spore: proposed def'n: A reproductive cell, usually unicellular, capable of developing into an adult without fusion with another cell. (Raven, Evert, Eichorn, 4th Ed)

comments: the product of meiosis, is_a plant cell, parent of megaspore, microspore, develops into the gametophyte

At the Ithaca meeting, we proposed having simple plant organ and compound plant organ as children of plant organ.

4. simple organ

Proposed def'n: A plant organ that does not contain any other plant organ as a part.

Examples: petal, root, simple leaf. [source: rw:test]

• This term may not be necessary with our current definition of plant organ (RW)

5. compound organ

Proposed def'n: plant organ that has as its parts two or more simple plant organs.

Example: fern sorus composed of multiple sporangia or gyneocium composed of multiple carpels.

• This term may not be necessary with our current definitions of plant organ and collective plant structure (RW).

6. Upcoming Conferences:

• American Society of Plant Biology (ASPB) July 31-Aug 4th 2010, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Laurel, Pankaj going, mini symposium presentation (hopefully) or poster and annotation workshop with Gramene. Abstract submitted 3/12/10

• Botanical Society of America (BSA)- July 31-Aug 4th 2010. Providence, Rhode Island. Ramona, Dennis going (?), 12 minute oral presentation, Abstract submission deadline 4/1/10.

• Bio-Ontologies 2010: Semantic Applications in Life Sciences. July 9th and 10th, 2010, Boston, Mass. Satellite Interest Group (SIG) meeting preceding the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). Laurel, Ramona going (?). Abstract/short paper submission deadline 4/15/10.

• International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). July 10th-13th, 2010. Boston, Mass. Laurel going (?).

• International Botanical Congress (IBC2011). July 23rd-30th 2011, Melbourne, Australia. Important dates (http://www.ibc2011.com/Dates.htm): "Call of symposia closes" 3-31-10, Abstracts submission deadline: 12-1-10.

• Latin American Congress of Botany (http://www.botanica-alb.org/X_Congreso/index.php). La Serena, Chile, October 4-10; MAG: "I am not sure about due dates for this one due to the earthquake".