MOSS 2004

The 7th Annual Moss International Conference

- Opening Remarks by Ralf Reski -

 

 
Thank you very much for coming to Freiburg. Welcome to MOSS 2004! We are happy that you join us.

Some of you may confuse our location with Freiberg in Germany which translates into "Free Mountain" and is far east from our location. So just to clarify your status, you are now in Freiburg, which translates into "Free Castle", which of course is on top of a mountain. To guide you a bit about the town you are in now, you are in the southwest of Germany. The castle was founded 913 years ago, and still the place is known as "Schloßberg". We sometimes go there for a drink or two, and we can sit there thinking about 913 years of history. The little villages around this castle were combined about 884 years ago into the town of Freiburg. In 1200, they started building a big Cathedral called the Münster. You will see this impressive building tonight.
On Monday, those of you who book the conference dinner, will go outside of Freiburg, to a small mountain. In fact, this mountain is part of my home village. There is a restaurant called "Die Halde". It was a farm house, but about 667 years ago, it became a restaurant; it has been a restaurant ever since then. Lots of excellent food over there!

After having an excellent restaurant near Freiburg, some people thought, "Well, now we can found a University." So 547 years ago, the University of Freiburg was founded. This part of Europe has a very interesting history: It belonged to the state of Baden, became part of France and then part of Austria. And still today you feel the mixture of different cultures. In this part of Germany people are more open-minded than is normally thought about Germans. To prove this statement, about 104 years ago, the first female was allowed to enroll in a German University, and it was this university setting the pace for equal rights in Germany.

Freiburg is a small town of about 200,000 inhabitants. We have about 30,000 students; most of them are enrolled in this University. In Germany, we are now talking a lot about ranking and so on. The European Union has a score about the highest impact on publication and citation. And according to this score, we rank sixth in Europe and second in Germany. Additionally, 600 personnel managers of German companies considered our faculty to provide the best education in Biology.

You might not know it, but the most highly cited biologist ever, Hans Spemann, was professor in Freiburg. He received a Nobel Prize in 1935 for his work on embryo development and you all might recall the "Spemann Organizer". Georges Köhler, also from Freiburg, is the man who discovered monoclonal antibodies. He was only interested in science, so he never applied for a patent. Otherwise you would have to pay a lot more for your monoclonal antibodies, and our university would be very rich. Köhler won the Nobel Prize about 20 years ago and unfortunately died very young.

We have outstanding botanists, of course, in Freiburg also. Some of you are aware that Freiburg is associated with phytochrome research. The long history of phytochrome research in Germany came from Hans Mohr based here in Freiburg. Some of you may also know that the Golden Rice, the first genetically modified plant with a real human benefit, was made here in Freiburg by Peter Beyer. And I am convinced Peter deserves a Nobel Prize for this as well.

Martin Bopp was also here in Freiburg, where he finished his Ph.D. in 1951, working on moss mutants and regulation of bud development in moss protonema. So German moss mutant research originated here. I think Martin Bopp is my scientific grandfather because he moved from Freiburg to Hannover and then to Heidelberg. There, he attracted a bright young scientists who was interested to join him as Associate Professor.


That young scientist was Wolfgang Abel who later became my Ph.D. supervisor at Hamburg University. Especially, it is my joy to have both with me today. Moss2004 is the occasion that Martin Bopp and Wolfgang Abel are seeing each other after 13 years for the first time. So we have a long standing history sitting here in the first row. Please join me in welcoming these two moss heroes and their wifes! Well, not excactly my scientific father, but a kind of uncle, a lighthouse throughout my scientific carreer is also with us today. It is really my joy that David Cove agreed to open this special meeting which will be a historic one because Moss2004 will always be annotated to the foundation of the Moss Genome Sequencing Consortium. Therefore, please join me all in welcoming David and his wife Anne. All of us I wish a very stimulating meeting and pleasant few days together.