History and Purpose

The Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee (MASC) has its origin in the 1990s when scientists from the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia formed an ad hoc committee to promote large-scale studies in Arabidopsis thaliana. One of the main aims of the committee was and still is to strengthen international collaboration and coordination, to reduce redundancy and to help in guiding the community in making progress on projects that can be successful only by combined international efforts. This idea of a combined and coordinated effort accompanied by the policy of open data sharing has proven successful and led to the establishment of Arabidopsis thaliana as a reference plant and the Arabidopsis community as being one of the most active research communities. Arabidopsis researchers can look back on more than 40 successful  years – having published the first fully sequenced plant genome, functionally annotated most genes, and developed  a plethora of techniques, tools and resources. Within the previous 20 years two MASC road maps guided Arabidopsis research: ‘The Multinational Coordinated Arabidopsis thaliana – Genome Research Project’ in the 1990s and ‘The Multinational Coordinated Arabidopsis thaliana Functional Genomics Project’ in the 2000s. The third MASC road map was published in 2012 ‘The Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee – From bench to bountiful harvests’ (Lavagi et al., 2012, Plant Cell, 24:2240-2247). The main aim of the Arabidopsis community stated in the third road map is to obtain in-depth knowledge of how the genome is translated into a continuum of processes, from the single molecule to cells and tissues, the whole plant, plant populations, and fields of plants to be able to build a predictive model of an Arabidopsis plant, which is accompanied by the development of big data management systems. Additionally, Arabidopsis researchers have put increased effort into outreach to other plant communities and into translational approaches to allow effective exchange of information. 

Composition and Responsibilities

The Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee (MASC) is composed of representatives from each country with major efforts in Arabidopsis research or coalition of countries with smaller programs. It is open to any country interested in participating. Selection of MASC representatives is left to the discretion of each country. The MASC meets once a year in conjunction with the International Conference on Arabidopsis Research (ICAR). Rotating MASC chairs and co-chairs are selected from the MASC membership, including country representatives and subcommittee members. Specific responsibilities of the MASC are:

• To coordinate programmatic aspects of the Arabidopsis research world-wide.
• To facilitate open communication and free exchange of data, materials and ideas among the Arabidopsis research community.
• To monitor and summarize progress of scientific activities of participating laboratories.
• To identify needs and opportunities of the Arabidopsis research community and communicate them to funding agencies of participating nations.
• To periodically update and adjust the course of the project

MASC structure

Below you can find the overview of the MASC and its members. By clicking on the green buttons you will find more information about the MASC subcommittees, the MASC countries and the Arabidopsis community projects and resources.

MASC President

Thorsten Hamann


MASC Treasurer

Nicholas Provart


MASC coordinator

Geraint Parry

(Chair)

Sébastien Aubourg, INRA, Evry, France

aubourg@evry.inra.fr

Sean May, University of Nottingham, UK

sean@Arabidopsis.info

Klaus Mayer, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany
Kmayer@gsf.de


Yasukazu Nakamura, Kazusa DNA Research Institute, Japan

yn@kazusa.or.jp


Yves Van Den Peer, VIB / Ghent University, Belgium

yvdp@psb.UGent.be


Christopher Town, J. Craig Venter Institute, US

cdtown@jcvi.org


Tetsuro Toyoda, RIKEN BASE, Japan

toyoda@base.riken.jp

Motoaki Seki, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS), Japan 

motoaki.seki@riken.jp
(chair)

Joe Ecker The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, US

ecker@salk.edu
(co-chair)


Pascal Braun, Technische Universität München, Germany

pascal.falter-braun@helmholtz-muenchen.de


Ian Small, ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, Australia

ian.small@uwa.edu.au


Satoshi Iuchi, RIKEN Bioresource Center, Japan

satoshi.iuchi@riken.jp


Debbie Crist, ABRC, Ohio State University

crist.30@osu.edu

Kazuki Saitov, RIKEN / Chiba University, Japan

kazuki.saito@riken.jp

(Chair)


Wolfram Weckwerth, University of Vienna; Austria

wolfram.weckwerth@univie.ac.at

(Co-chair)


Mike Beale, Rothamsted Research, UK

mike.beale@rothamsted.ac.uk


Alisdair Fernie, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, Germany

Fernie@mpimp-golm.mpg.de


Oliver Fiehn, University of California, US

ofiehn@ucdavis.edu


Tony Larson, University of York, UK

trl1@york.ac.uk


Rob Last, Michigan State University, US

lastr@msu.edu


Basil Nikolau, Iowa State University, US

dimmas@iastate.edu

J. Chris Pires, University of Missouri, US

piresjc@missouri.edu

(Chair)


Brian P. Dilkes, Purdue University, US

bdilkes@purdue.edu

(Co-chair)


Justin Borevitz, Australian National University, Australia

justin.borevitz@anu.edu.au


Graham King, Southern Cross University, Australia

graham.king@scu.edu.au


Dan Kliebenstein, University of California-Davis, US

kliebenstein@ucdavis.edu


Marcus A. Koch, University of Heidelberg, Germany

marcus.koch@cos.uni-heidelberg.de


Nicholas Provart, University of Toronto, Canada nicholas.provart@utoronto.ca


M. Eric Schranz, Wageningen University, Netherlands

eric.schranz@wur.nl


Detlef Weigel, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany weigel@tue.mpg.de


Yalong Guo Chinese Academy of Sciences, yalong.guo@ibcas.ac.cn

Fabio Fiorani, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany

f.fiorani@fz-juelich.de

(Chair)


Christine Granier, INRA-SUPAGRO, France

granier@supagro.inra.fr (Co-Chair)


Justin Borevitz, Australian National University, Australia justin.borevitz@anu.edu.au


Stijn Dhondt, VIB, Gent, Belgium stijn.dhondt@ugent.vib.be


John Doonan, Aberystwyth University, UK

john.doonan@aber.ac.uk


Joe Ecker, Salk Institute, US

ecker@salk.edu

Joshua Heazlewood, University of Melbourne

jheazlewood@unimelb.edu.au
(Chair)

Katja Bärenfaller, Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland

bkatja@ethz.ch


Sacha Baginsky, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle- Wittenberg, Germany sacha.baginsky@biochemtech.uni-halle.de


Hans-Peter Braun, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany braun@genetik.uni-hannover.de


Steve Briggs, University of California, US

sbriggs@ad.ucsd.edu


Geert De Jaeger, VIB Ghent University, Belgium

gejae@psb.vib-ugent.be


Alexandra Jones, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

alex.jones@warwick.ac.uk


Harvey Millar, The University of Western Australia, Australia

harvey.millar@uwa.edu.au


Hans-Peter Mock, Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Germany mock@ipk-gatersleben.de


Hirofumi Nakagami, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Japan hirofumi.nakagami@riken.jp


Scott Peck, University of Missouri, US

pecks@missouri.edu


Loïc Rajjou, AgroParisTech, France

loic.rajjou@versailles.inra.fr


Sigrun Reumann, University of Stavanger, Norway

sigrun.reumann@uis.no


Norbert Rolland, CEA, Grenoble, France

norbert.rolland@cea.fr


Véronique Santoni, INRA, France

santoniv@supagro.inra.fr


Waltraud Schulze, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany wschulze@uni-hohenheim.de


Nicolas Taylor, The University of Western Australia, Australia

ntaylor@cyllene.uwa.edu.au


Jay Thelen, University of Missouri, US

thelenj@missouri.edu


Klaas van Wijk, Cornell University, USA

kv35@cornell.edu


Wolfram Weckwerth, University of Vienna, Austria

wolfram.weckwerth@univie.ac.at


Julian Whitelegge, University of California, US

jpw@chem.ucla.edu


Stefanie Wienkoop, University of Vienna, Austria

stefanie.wienkoop@univie.ac.at

Siobhan Brady, (Co-chair), University of California, US sbrady@ucdavis.edu

Malcolm Bennett, (Co-chair), University of Nottingham, UK malcolm.bennett@nottingham.ac.uk

Leah Band, University of Nottingham, UK

leah.band@nottingham.ac.uk


Pascal Falter-Braun, Technische Universität München, Germany

pbraun@wzw.tum.de


Rodrigo A. Gutiérrez, P. Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile

rgutierrez@bio.puc.cl


Gabriel Krouk, CNRS, France

krouk@supagro.inra.fr


Nicola Patron, Earlham Institute, UK

nicola.patron@earlham.ac.uk

Canada
Dario Bonetta, dario.bonetta@uoit.ca

United States
Joanna Friesner, jdfriesner@ucdavis.edu

North American Arabidopsis Steering
Committee (NAASC)

https://www.araport.org/community/group/naasc