Announcement of "The Plant Molecular Evolution Newsletter"

[Klaus Schumann [Biologie]]

Dear Netters,

below find enclosed an announcement of "The Plant Molecular Evolution
Newsletter". I am posting this on behalf of Dr. Martin (see below), who is
responsible for organization and distribution. So if you have any questions
or comments, please contact him direct.
This announcement is posted on bionet.general, bionet.plants and bionet.molbio.
evolution. Apologies for this cross-postings, but I want to reach everybody
being potential interested.


Klaus Schumann
Fachbereich Biologie
Universitaet Kaiserslautern
D-67653 Kaiserslautern
schumann at rhrk.uni-kl.de

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Announcement: "The Plant Molecular Evolution Newsletter"


At a recent meeting*, it was concluded that a number of research 
groups worldwide are working on similar or related questions of plant 
evolution through study of the same gene(s). It was furthermore noted 
that an enormous backlog of molecular sequence data exists which, for 
various reasons, is reaching neither the database nor the literature. 
As a consequence, some efforts in current plant molecular phylogenetic 
reasearch are redundant. The general opinion was that there is a genuine 
need for a rapidly distributed and informal newsletter for groups 
working on or interested in molecular phylogenetics of plants. Thus, 
as of July 1, 1992, we have been issuing "The Plant Molecular 
Evolution Newsletter" as an informal forum for exchange of ideas and 
data. 

The Newsletter distributes - U N R E F E R E E D - all contributions 
submitted which contain either i) experimental data, ii) data evaluation 
and/or iii) discussion as concerns molecular evolution in plants. 

Submissions 

-	cannot be used or cited by others without express consent of the 
	authors
-	should concern higher plant and eukaryotic algal, but not fungal 
	evolution	
-	should be in English
-	may be of the simple "For the Record" type, i.e. just the data 
-	need not contain complete sequences
-	may contain just ideas
-	may just report what topics the authors have recently been 
	working on
-	may include figures and discussion
-	will not require database accessions to sequences
-	should be on A4 or 8 1/2" x 11" paper with at least 3 cm margins
-	should not be longer than five double-spaced typewritten pages
	(excluding data) 
-	will be reproduced and distributed precisely as submitted (full 
	author responsibility) 
-	and importantly, should not contain detailed analysis of 
	unavailable data (since this is precisely the problem which 
	needs to be solved). 

The Newsletter should stimulate cooperation and deal primarily with 
research in progress. It should facilitate access to unpublished 
comparative data, and represent a forum for new ideas and 
interpretation of data. It is a quarterly forum within which the 
reader can find out "who's doing what" or "who may wish to cooperate 
on a formal paper". It will be of value to the scientific community to 
precisely the extent that authors contribute. A grant from UNESCO 
covered costs for the first issue, so that this may be obtained free upon  
request. Subsequent subscription costs DM 25.00 (US $15.00) per year. 
To ensure that the Newsletter will be a forum for 

			e  x  c  h  a  n  g  e, 

subscribers are encouraged to submit at least one full page contribution 
per twelve month period.   

If you wish to receive the first free edition of the Newsletter or submit 
a contribution to the next issue, forward your correspondence to 

		Bill Martin
		Institut fuer Genetik
		Technische Universitaet Braunschweig
		Spielmennstrasse 7
		D-38106 Braunschweig
		Germany
		fax 		49-531-391-5765
		e-mail	martin at venus.gbf-braunschweig.dbp.de
		telephone 	49-531-391-5785.

* UNESCO Conference on Plant Molecular Phylogenetics
  Jan. 13 - 15, 1992, Cologne, Germany

Subscribers to the first issue currently include the UNSECO Conference 
Paticipants

	A. Antonov, Moskow, Russia
	W.-H. Li, Houston, USA
	W.-Y. Liu, Shanghai, China
	P. Martin, Adelaide, Australia		
	W. Martin, Braunschweig, Germany
	V. Ratner, Novosibirsk, Russia
	H. Saedler, Cologne, Germany
	and many others including
	
	I. Akatsuka, Tokyo, Japan
	R. Alberte, Arlington, USA
	K. Bachmann, Amsterdam, Netherlands
	J. Beardall, Clayton, Australia
	W. Bennert, Bochum, Germany
	B. Bremer, Uppsala, Sweden
	G. Brown, Laramie, USA
	M. Chase, Chapel Hill, USA
	S.-M. Chaw, Taipei, Taiwan
	C. Colacino, Potenza, Italy
	M. Crisp, Canberra, Australia
	S. Douglas, Halifax, Canada
	M. Duvall, Riverside, USA
	F. Ehrendorfer, Vienna, Austria
	P. Gadek, Kensington, Australia
	M. Gardiner-Garden, Sydney, Australia
	D. Graur, Tel Aviv, Israel
	M. Gray, Halifax, Canada
	M. Hasebe, Tokyo, Japan
	R. Herrmann, Munich, Germany
	J. Heslop-Harrison, Norwich, England
	H. Hurka, Osnabruck, Germany
	V. Huss, Erlangen, Germany
	M. Ito, Tokyo, Japan
	R. Jansen, Austin, USA
	U. Jensen, Bayreuth, Germany
	C. Jung, Munich, Germany
	T. Kajita, Sendai, Japan
	S. Kresovich, Geneva, USA
	J. Learn, Riverside, USA
	A. Liston, Corvallis, USA
	J. Logsdon, Bloomington, USA
	S. Loiseaux-de Gor, Roscoff, France
	J.-F. Manen, Chambesy, Switzerland
	H. Micheals, Bowling Green, USA
	G. McFadden, Melbourne, Australia
	M. Melkonian, Cologne, Germany
	B. Mishler, Durham, USA
	N. Murakami, Tokyo, Japan
	B. Ness, Angwin, USA
	D. Nickrent, Carbondale, USA
	Y. Ogihara, Yokohama, Japan
	J. Palmer, Bloomington, USA
	D. Penny, Palmerston N., New Zealand
	M. Ragan, Halifax, Canada
	C. Quinn, Kensington, Australia
	N. Saitou, Mishima, Japan
	V. Savolaienen, Chambesy, Switzerland
	D. Schweitzer, Vienna, Austria
	T. Shimizu, Kanazawa, Japan
	P. Sitte, Freiburg, Germany
	D. Soltis, Pullman, USA
	D. Steane, Oxford, England
	K. Stueber, Cologne, Germany
	S. Swenson, Knoxville, USA
	T. Terachi, Kyoto, Japan
	R. Terauchi, Kyoto, Japan
	K. Ueda, Osaka, Japan
	J. Wendell, Ames, USA
	K. Wolfe, Dublin, Ireland
	K. Yamada, Toyama, Japan
	K. Yoshinaga, Shizuoka, Japan
	F. Zechman, Philadelphia, USA
	K. Zetsche, Giessen, Germany
	E. Zimmer, Washington, USA

I was "elected" to be responsible for organization and distribution of 
the Newsletter. Therefore, if you wish to be included in the list of 
subscribers, please let me know. You will receive 
confirmation of your correspondence within two weeks.  

If you have further questions or suggestions, please contact me. Hoping 
to hear from you soon and looking forward to your contribution, I remain 

Yours sincerely, 


Bill Martin

*********************************************************************

That was the original announcement which was sent last summer 
as hard copy to about 150 addresses worldwide and by e-mail to a 
few addresses which I had obtained. Recently, Klaus Schumann 
(Kaiserslautern, Germany) suggested the idea of BIONET distribution 
of the announcement. That seemed like an excellent idea and this 
file is the result. The following excerpt from the Preface to the 
first issue of the Plant Molecular Evolution Newsletter contains some 
further information. 
				.
				.
				.

International reasonce to the idea of an informal newsletter dealing 
specifically with this field was very positive, as documented by the 
list of over 100 scientists from 17 countries (see pages 39-42, thanks 
to all) who have expressed interest to date. Thus, there clearly exists a 
"demand" for information on plant molecular evolution, it is up to us to 
provide "supply" in the form of contributions. The question is then just 
what a contribution should contain? The original announcement for the 
Newsletter (reproduced above in this document) described a few very 
general stipulations which represent the consensus of many long 
discussions with numerous scientists. I should briefly delineate 
the reasoning behind each. 

1. Submissions will not be refereed, all contributions will be 
distributed as submitted. We need a newsletter, not another journal. We 
can express our ideas and opinions precisely as we wish directly to 
those who very likely will have an interest in what we have to say. Lack 
of a refereeing process puts full responsibility for the content of 
contributions upon the authors, speeds up the distribution process and 
provides us with a degree of freedom we currently do not have 
elsewhere. 

2. Submissions cannot be used or cited by others without express 
consent of the authors. This is common practice for many newsletters 
and is intended promote an open atmosphere. Distribution of 
information through the Newsletter does not preclude formal 
publication in journals and vice versa. 

3. Submissions should concern higher plant and eukaryotic algal, but not 
fungal evolution.  This point hinges on the definition of a plant, which 
poses no problem if you work on angiosperms, but becomes increasingly 
relevant the further back you go in eukaryotic evolution. 

4. Submissions should be in English. There already IS a plant molecular 
evolution newsletter in Japanese. As a second language, English was the 
logical choice. 

5. Submissions may be of the simple "For the Record" type, i.e. just the 
data. This provides an opportunity to make data available rapidly to 
those who will likely have an interest in it or who may have been 
planning to sequence precisely that gene. Getting sequences "out" 
quickly helps avoid redundant work. Remember point (2) above. 

6. Submissions need not contain complete sequences. Many PCR and 
reverse transcriptase approaches yield incomplete sequences which, of 
course, are phylogenetically very valuable. 

7. Submissions may contain just ideas. There should be sufficient 
subject matter for comment or debate in the field of plant evolution. No 
referee will lament the fact that submitted discussion is, in his or her 
opinion, "too specu