CSB Professor Daphne Goring has been awarded the CSPB Gold Medal, the highest honour from the Canadian Society of Plant Biologists (CSPB).
Goring is being celebrated for her ground-breaking research on flowering plants that revealed fundamental aspects of biology in the molecular processes that prevent plants from inbreeding and that promote successful reproduction.
Her group has made major contributions by identifying and characterizing novel components in pollen-pistil recognition including receptor kinases and downstream protein effectors, as well as cellular responses such as secretion and autophagy.
Before pollen can fertilize an ovule, it must land on the plant pistil and make its way inside to the ovule. Goring and her students probe the cell-to-cell signals between pistil and pollen and the changes provoked in both by contact between pollen and stigmatic papillae.
These studies required a detailed analysis of the genetic components of self-incompatibility that prevent inbreeding as well as the components that promote compatible pollen-pistil interactions. The Goring lab identified multiple receptor kinases that regulate these responses and identified downstream factors activated by these receptor kinases.
Enthusiastic exploration of the cellular responses to pollen meant Goring’s lab was the first to demonstrate the core mechanism of self-incompatibility: ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation of compatibility factors in the pistil, which in turn leads to pollen rejection.
Goring’s career passed through universities as diverse as Trent, McGill, Guelph and Toronto and encompassed both animal and plant studies. She knew early on that she wanted to study biology, and although she did not have an overall career plan, each step was carefully considered and led to new levels of excellence in her fields.
While finishing her PhD dissertation, Goring observed that application of molecular biology to plant sciences was just getting started. She was eager to explore this frontier, and comfortable with horticulture as her mother was an amateur botanist.
Goring turned her attention to plant molecular genetics as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph (1990). This led to professorships, first at York University (1993-2001), and then at the University of Toronto starting in 2001.
Over the course of her career, Goring has published in Science, PNAS, Plant Cell and other prestigious journals where her work, collectively, has been cited more than 6800 times.
In recognition of her scientific achievements, Dr. Goring received the C.D. Nelson Award from the Canadian Society of Plant Biologists (CSBP, 2001), an NSERC Tier I Canada Research Chair (2005-2012), and was elected as a Fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS Fellow) in 2011.
The CSPB Gold Medal also recognizes her leading role in the plant sciences community as a mentor and organizer. She serves as an editor for scientific journals and reviewer for academic grants. To date, she has supervised 26 graduate students, over 60 undergraduates, and taught foundational courses in Cell & Molecular Biology and Plant Biotechnology. She has been integral to running CSPB, and in planning meetings to expose the excellence of plant sciences in Canada.
Dr Goring has had an outstanding research career, and her colleagues in the plant biology community have been the benefactors of her enthusiastic efforts to raise awareness of plant biology in Canada. The CSPB Society Gold Medal is a fitting and well-earned recognition of Dr. Goring’s remarkable achievements.