Company of Biologists Workshop – Growth, Division and Differentiation – Day 3 – afternoon

As a follow up to Ben Martynoga’s post from yesterday, here is some more information on the topics covered in this excellent workshop that took place a couple of weeks ago.

After extensive revolutions around the cell cycle in many of the previous sessions, Ryoichiro Kageyama introduced quite a different rhythm to the meeting in the afternoon session where he talked about Hes1 oscillations in embryonic and adult neural stem cells. Ryoichiro showed impressive live-imaging data from reporter constructs that allow his lab to visualize these oscillations. Besides being an exciting thing to watch, these oscillations are also important to balance self-renewal and neurogenesis during development, as Ryoichiro showed.

The next talk of the session by Nick Monk then took quite a theoretical approach to the same topic. Instead of Western blots and fluorescent micrographs he showed a lot of colorful simulations, which he used to investigate how in theory the oscillators described by Ryoichiro can be built by connecting the different components of the Delta/Notch signaling system. Nick showed that communication between single cells can make a big difference to the oscillatory dynamics. Communication therefore is essential not only for scientists, but also for their study objects.
Marc Kirschner from Harvard Medical School then gave the plenary talk of the meeting. He presented a balance with which to weigh single cells, and described how it can be used to address a very fundamental question in cell cycle research: How are cellular growth and cell cycle integrated to control size variability in cell populations? His talk perfectly set the tone for the evening session, where the participants together aimed at identifying the future big questions in the field. What became clear is that we’ll probably move away from searching for more and more kinases and phosphorylation sites, but will rather focus on integrative approaches. We may for example aim at understanding how the modules that drive cell cycle and growth are integrated and exchange information, how cells generate, sense and react to tissue level signals, and how the characteristics of the cell cycle differ in development, tissue homeostasis and disease.

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