Better late than never… 70th SDB meeting report
Posted by Julieta Acevedo, on 31 August 2011
Thanks to the support from the Company of Biologists I had the opportunity to attend the 70th SDB meeting that was held last month in the hot but wonderful city of Chicago. During three days we enjoyed more than 60 excellent talks and about 500 really good posters that were focused on different aspects of developmental biology …
We had the opportunity to hear many outstanding talks but two of them particularly caught my attention, the one given by Tom Kornberg during the Presidential Symposium and the one given by Peter Reddien during the Stem Cell Biology Session. Tom Kornberg lectured us about the specificity of a long distance signalling mechanism that operates during Drosophila imaginal discs development and involves the use of cytonemes, specific types of filopodia that work as channels through which morphogen signalling proteins move from a producing cell to a target cell. Peter Reddien gave a remarkable talk about the molecular basis of regeneration in planarians, in which he explained to us how a single transplanted neoblast (adult planarian stem cell) can restore the regenerative capacity of a lethal irradiated worm.
Among the sections I enjoyed the most was the Hilde Mangold Posdoctoral Symposium where eight SDB postdoctoral members gave short talks that were judged by a committee who selected the best speaker to receive an Award. The winner of this year was Lena Ho from the Institute of Medical Biology in Singapore.
During the closing session we had the pleasure of listening to the Awards lectures where Gail Martin and Ruth Lehmann gave two extraordinary talks in which they made a summary of their successful scientific careers.
The meeting was exceptionally well organized, everything from the welcome talk to the Closing banquet went perfectly.
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Hi Julieta!
Of the more standard talks, I’d be very interested in hearing about an example – perhaps one that is close to your field of interest? I’ve never been to a SDB meeting, though it’s always been tempting. Some other year!
Thanks,
Heather