Tuesday: Cell cycling and growth, stem cells and fate, and medal-winners’ lectures

Buzz Baum opened the cell cycle and growth in development session with a talk about his lab’s work at UCL on cell shape changes during mitosis in dissociated culture and in epithelial sheets. The talk covered cell rounding on entry into mitosis due to actin remodelling and the links between cell shape change and successful mitosis progression. Anna Philpott of the University of Cambridge discussed the regulation of proliferation and differentiation by post-translational modifications, including the accumulation of multi-site phosphorylation events, in neurogenesis.

Alison Lloyd gave a talk on Schwann cell dedifferentiation and proliferation in adult regeneration and the behaviour of proliferative Schwann cells after injury. She also discussed results from a novel mouse model of neurofibroma from her lab at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology and the UCL Cancer Institute. Fumio Matsuzaki of RIKEN CDB described asymmetric, symmetric and the rarely-observed oblique stem cell divisions in the subventricular zone, and their potential involvement in altering the balance of cortical progenitor numbers and promoting brain expansion in mammalian brain evolution.

The second poster session was held over Tuesday lunchtime, concurrent with a seminar on Huygens deconvolution in microscopy sponsored by Scientific Volume Imaging.

Stem cells and cell fate choice were the topics of the afternoon session. The many interesting presentations on stem cell topics in this and other sessions were an excellent reminder of the degree to which stem cell biology is integral to many developmental biology subfields. Sally Lowell’s talk on priming pluripotent cells for differentiation first established an incremental, rather than binary, model for progressive ES cell differentiation, before presenting findings on pro-differentiation signalling and transcription factor interactions. Mario Stavridis, a young PI at Dundee University, gave a fascinating talk on post-translational modification with beta-O-N-acetylated glucosamine, a parallel mechanism to protein phosphorylation that regulates embryonic stem cell differentiation. Berenika Plusa presented wonderful videos of live cell sorting in transgenic mouse blastocysts, showing cell type emergence and behaviour during the establishment of cell fate.

Josh Brickman spoke on lineage priming in embryonic stem cells, looking at the small initial differences in key molecule transcription and translation that prime stem cells to later adopt different fates. Soshei Yoshida from the National institute for Basic Biology, Japan, capped the session with a report on the process of spermatogenic stem cell self-renewal and progressive differentiation in the live mouse testis, discussing  how continuity in mouse spermatogenesis is promoted by the long-term maintenance of a range of undifferentiated progenitor cell types.

The Beddington medal was awarded to Boyan Bonev, who gave an excellent talk on his PhD work in Nancy Papalopulu’s lab on the role of microRNA-9 in neural progenitor development variation in space and time. Mutual regulation and oscillation between microRNA-9 and Hes transcription was found to produce a delayed trigger for neuronal differentiation.

The Waddington medal was presented to Alfonso Martinez-Arias of Cambridge University. As is traditional, his talk provided a retrospective of his life and career, with the inclusion of a number of special effects and musical numbers along with descriptions of his work on key Drosophila developmental pathways and cell fate determination. He closed his talk with words of solidarity for the upcoming generation of young scientists.

The evening graduate symposium was opened by Daphne Verleyen from the University of Leuven, who continued an emerging theme of the conference with her talk on left-right axis formation via cilia behaviour in Kupffer’s vesicle. She described results from a g-protein coupled receptor mutant zebrafish line with axis formation defects. Debbie McIntosh from the University of Dundee spoke on replication fork formation in stressed and cancerous cells, describing the results of a molecular screen on replication fork behaviour. Keliya Bai from the University of Aberdeen talked on epithelial elongation in c. elegans embryos through actin cytoskeleton contraction, and discussed an extensive screen carried out for components of the actin-anchoring complex.

Eight BSDB and BSCB poster prize winners were announced at the conference dinner, including Stephen Fleenor, Ricardo Laranjeiro, Tom Pettini and Jorge Beira. The delicious and social 3-course conference dinner was followed by disco music and dancing, over which a discrete veil will be drawn. A good time was had by all.

Wednesday: in vitro models of development and regeneration

The last session on in vitro models of developmental biology included talks from a number of regenerative medicine biologists, who provided a different perspective on in vitro culture as a tool for clinical applications as well as a model for examining tissue and cell function.

Keith Baar from UC Davis opened the day with his work on growing ligaments for transplant and using cultured ligaments as high throughput test bed for BMPs, FGFs and other combinations of molecules to examine their roles in tendon development. Andrea Vortkamp from University Duisberg-Essen presented results from analysis of chondrocyte development in a mouse mutant model of tricho-rhino-phalangeal syndrome, caused by Trps1 mutation, which is characterised by shortened limbs. The mutation appears to cause defects in cell cycle progression in chondrocytes due to effects on chromatin acetylation levels.

Masayuki Yamamoto from Tokyo Women’s Medical University gave an energetic talk on shyabu-shyabu bioengineering, which creates scaffold-free thin layers of tissue, including cornea, esophageal epithelium and skeletal muscle for human transplant. The culture technique used a polymer with temperature dependant cell-adhering properties, allowing cells and ECM to be harvested as a single sheet with the now-available UpCell dishes. Fiona Watt, head of the Centre for Stem Cell and Regenerative medicine at KCL, finished the conference on a high note with her talk on epidermal stem cell and niche interactions and responses of these groups of cells to microenvironmental cues. Her talk highlighted the research progress made through close collaboration with chemists and bioengineers in producing faithful and incisive in vitro models of the epithelial stem cell niche.

As always, the BSDB Spring meeting was a chance to see a good cross-section of current developmental biology research and – thanks to the BSCB joint meeting – catch up on relevant cell biology topics in the same place. It was also great to meet up with so many people from previous years’ conferences and see how their research has evolved. I look forward especially to seeing JSDB members again in future conferences.

The 2012 Spring meeting of the British Society for Developmental Biology was held on the 15^th-18^th April at the spacious campus of Warwick University.  The meeting was held jointly with the Japanese Society for Developmental Biology and the British Society for Cell Biology. Many delegates from the JSDB attended, presented interesting talks and posters and greatly enlivened proceedings.

Sunday: Plenary lectures

The evening BSDB plenary lecture was given by Denis Duboule on the vertebrate Hox clock, describing the regulation of temporally and spatially collinearly expressed Hox genes. Focusing on the HoxD cluster, he described the use of ChIP and chromatin crosslinking to map the state of Hox gene packaging at different points in the Hox expression clock, presenting a directional chromatin transition-mediated model for temporal regulation of Hox gene expression within a Hox cluster. The BSCB plenary lecture by J.Richard McIntosh of the University of Colorado discussed microtubule tips as mechano-chemical devices, describing work showing how microtubules are capable of transporting loads at the depolymerising pole of the microtubule through the behaviour of depolarising filaments.

The joint plenary session was a great start to the conference on Sunday night, followed by the student and post-doc social pub quiz (joined by a few BSDB committee members), a great chance for some in-depth student socialising. Honourable mention to the winners of the coveted ‘best team name’ prize, Insane in the Phospholipid Bilayer, for making everyone laugh.

Monday: Systems biology, scientific careers,  imaging in development, and a turbulent AGM

The day’s first session on systems biology and next generation genome sequencing was opened by Duncan Odom speaking on transcriptional regulation in mammals, looking in particular at non-conserved promoter sequences that produce conserved  transcription factor binding patterns along the cis-regulatory region. Shane Herbert described the role of the homeobox gene hlx1 in sprouting endothelial tubules in zebrafish angiogenesis, introducing the tip/stalk model of growing blood vessels that appeared again in later talks. Erika Sasaki of the Institute for Experimental Animals in Kawasaki gave a fascinating talk on the use of lentiviral vectors in the generation of transgenic marmosets and the applications of transgenic primates in neurological and preclinical research. Kazuo Emoto from the Osaka Bioscience Institute opened the second half of the session with a talk on the shaping of Drosophila sensory neuron dendritic trees into sensory lattices through growth, calcium-current related pruning, regrowth and reshaping.

The Monday lunchtime career panel of PIs arranged by conference organiser Kim Dale dispensed advice and answered post-doc and student questions. The process of carving out a distinct and different niche in your field was discussed, as well as the importance of having and nurturing a passion for your chosen research subject – to sustain you through the inevitable lows (“It doesn’t stop hurting, but you eventually grow numb…”) of labwork, publishing and funding as well as the highs.  The impact of uncertainty and mobility in scientific careers on partners was also discussed, with the panel mentioning the necessity of discussing the burdens of scientific spouses. There was also mention of the importance of awareness of the ticking fellowship clock, with panellists stressing that many independent fellowships are restricted to applicants within 6 years of their PhD award.  For those interested in interdisciplinary research, the EIPOD EMBL postdoctoral fellowship program was recommended later in the conference.

The Monday afternoon session contained a range of talks on imaging space and time during development. Elliot Meyerowitz of the new Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge (who have a stated wealth of funding, positions and space, for all the plant developmental biologists reading) gave the lone but highly engaging plant development talk of the conference on shoot apical meristem patterning, including computer modelling of the role of both morphogens and physical forces on cells in the spiral pattern of meristem development. Toshiko Fujimori presented findings on cilia development and function in the mouse oviduct. He focused on the role of planar cell polarity in cilia orientation and oviduct membrane folding, demonstrating the links between micro and macroscopic organ morphology.

Antonio Jacinto’s talk on epithelial wound closure showcased some interesting videos of laser ablation and wound healing in Drosophila epithelial sheets, unpicking the rapid cytoskeletal processes behind the epithelial cell reshaping response to injury. Georgina Stooke-Vaughn from Sheffield University gave an assured talk on her ongoing PhD work on otolith development and hair cell cilia in the developing zebrafish vestibular system. Ryoichiro Kageyama of Kyoto University spoke on ultradian (shorter than circadian) rhythms in the somite segmentation clock in mouse, focusing on the processes behind and downstream of oscillations in Hes7 expression in the presomitic mesoderm. Hes expression oscillation was a popular theme, also appearing in several posters and the Beddington medal talk.

Finishing the afternoon session with a bang, the Hooke medal talk was delivered by Holger Gerhardt of Cancer Research UK on cell competition and vascular development in zebrafish, discussing tip and stalk cell dynamics in growing epithelial tubules. He presented both experimental and compelling visualised mathematical model evidence for a regulatory network involving VEGF and Notch that patterns angiogenic branching at intervals along the zebrafish spine.

The BSDB AGM took place on Monday evening. The vote to fill 3 open BSDB committee spaces was held, and it was announced later in the conference the new members are Anna Philpott, Jo Begbie and Henry Roehl. It was also announced that future spring meetings will be held at Warwick University for the next few years.

The evening poster session was lively and stimulating, with freely flowing ideas and beer.

Although there was no “official hashtag” to be used on Twitter, several attendees of the recent BSCB/BSDB/JSDB meeting were livetweeting the event. I tried to keep up, and collected several of the tweets in this Storify, so you can see what was discussed online during the conference. A full report from the meeting is on its way as well.

Abstract deadline: 27 July 2012 | Registration deadline: 1 September 2012

Building on the success of last year’s event, ECD 2012 will bring together scientists from the fields of epigenomics, genetics and bioinformatics to discuss the latest developments in this fast-moving field. This Wellcome Trust conference will discuss recent advances focusing on genome-wide approaches that are revolutionizing the field. Recent technological developments have made it possible to conduct epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) to investigate the link between changes to the epigenome and the development of disease. Sessions will include: epigenomic studies across of a range of common diseases, including psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders and diseases of the immune system; model organisms and model systems; mathematical approaches to epigenomics; intergenerational and environmental effects; and translational epigenomics.

Abstract submission is strongly encouraged as a significant number of presentations will be selected from the abstracts.

Scientific organising committee:
Stephan Beck, University College London, UK
Susan Clark, The Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Australia
Andy Feinberg, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA
Anne Ferguson-Smith, University of Cambridge, UK

Venue:
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD, USA


Keynote Speakers:
Shelley Berger, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Bert Vogelstein, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, USA

Invited Speakers include:
Stephan Beck, University College London, UK
Jessica Connelly, University of Virginia, USA
Daniele Fallin, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA
Andy Feinberg, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA
Doug Higgs, University of Oxford, UK
Tim Huang, University of Texas Health Science Center, USA
Barbara Knowles, ASTAR, Singapore
X. Shirley Liu, Dana-Farber/Harvard School of Public Health, USA
Shalini Oberdoerffer, National Cancer Institute, USA
Dirk Schübeler, Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Switzerland
Amos Tanay, Weizmann Institute, Israel
Toshikazu Ushijima, National Cancer Center Research Institute, Japan

For more information: https://registration.hinxton.wellcome.ac.uk/display_info.asp?id=298