New Technologies for Studying and Reprogramming Development – The Company of Biologists Workshop

Organisers: Alex Dunn, Zev Gartner, Adrian Jacobo and Matthew Kutys

Rapid periods of scientific advance are often proceeded by important leaps in experimental methodology and measurement modalities. The field of developmental biology is currently undergoing such a period of rapid advance, spurred in part by the adoption and development of a variety of powerful analytical, theoretical, and engineering tools. This meeting aims to convene a group of scientists that are advancing the frontiers of developmental biology and related fields by engineering and applying new tools from multiple directions. In considering the diverse array of technical possibilities facing the modern developmental biologist, three observations stand out. First, new approaches frequently emerge from separate academic communities. Second, it is difficult for a practicing biologist to master more than one or two of these very powerful new methods. Third, many tools could be even more powerful if combined with another: for example, the combination of embryoid model systems with mechanobiological, computational, and modeling approaches could have a transformative impact on our understanding of mammalian morphogenesis. The goal of this meeting is therefore to bring together researchers who are at the forefront of their separate fields, with the anticipation that this will generate new ideas and new collaborations that might be unlikely to occur otherwise.

Topics of the meeting include:

– White space on the map: what are the conceptual gaps in the field that require new technologies and approaches?
– Genes in space and time: how can we reveal trajectories of cell fate using powerful and emerging technologies?
– Input, output: tools for manipulating diverse aspects of cellular function, from metabolism to membrane potential
– Building biology: we discuss powerful new in vitro modeling tools
– Molecular circuits and their rewiring: we highlight emerging tools from the field of synthetic biology
– Big data, human insight: how do we extract insight from big data?
– Pushing and pulling on cells and tissues: what are current and unmet needs for measuring and perturbing cell mechanics?
-More than the sum of its parts: we explore emerging theoretical approaches to build a more integrated understanding of developmental processes.
We hope that the meeting will serve as a catalyst, both for the seeding of new scientific advances, and for the dissemination of powerful, cutting-edge techniques to the developmental biology community as a whole.

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