On the Shape of Life: meeting report, SFBD meeting 2025

Recently, I attended ‘Shaping Life 3’, the quadrennial meeting of the French Society of Developmental Biology (SFBD). The first of these meetings happened in 2016: that’s where my current PI presented his work, with the excitement reaching me through my lab mates back then, who attended the meeting. Since then, attending these meetings has been on my bucket list. The second iteration took place late into the pandemic (2021), at a time when I still wasn’t feeling courageous enough to resume attending conferences: I guess, better late than never.

The meeting took place in the picturesque town of Cassis, famous also for its wine and the local vineyards. This was a bit of a homecoming meeting for me: I did my PhD in Marseille, a few kilometers from the meeting venue. My PhD institute, IBDM (Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille), being one of the organizing partners, there were many familiar faces in the meeting, showcasing their science.

Being a developmental biology conference, I felt more at home than ever. The international membership of SFBD was also reflected in this conference, with many participants coming from abroad, including outside Europe. The conference showcased the-latest-and-greatest in classical model systems as well as emerging ones, and covered topics from the origin of multicellularity to the development of the distributed central nervous system in Octopus. The diversity of the topics covered in the meeting was only rivalled by the diversity of the organisms, with 2 full sessions on ‘Evo-Devo and Emerging models’. In my opinion, this also mirrors a shift in the field of developmental biology, where doing experiments in non-model systems is becoming mainstream, with comparative analysis across multiple species gaining traction. It felt like the future – where such studies are included in more classical sessions like ‘morphogenesis’ – is closer than ever.

Exceptionally, only a quarter of the talks were from invited speakers; the rest were selected from submitted abstracts, with many of the speakers traveling from abroad, like me. This is the largest proportion of ‘selected talks’ I have seen. Naturally, this means more effort on the organizers’ side, going out of their way to do the difficult job of rejecting abstracts for oral presentation. Personally, I also appreciated that many speakers showed a lot of unpublished results; posters also had a similar ubiquity of unpublished/preprinted results: a welcoming sign to see preprinting becoming commonplace.

A highlight of the conference was the SFBD PhD prize seminar, by Gabriela Poliacikova, who walked us through the unusual function of Hox genes and their cofactor M1BP in Drosophila flight muscle development, during adult stages (see her publication here). She masterfully conveyed the excitement in her PhD project: reflected in the roaring applause that followed her talk.

In conjunction with all the science, we also had a Career Development session, especially for Early Career Researchers, with a lot of discussions on the uncertainties and anxieties associated with the current job market and how to navigate them. Our group decided to hold this session on the beach, chatting with Eve Seuntjens and Wolfgang Keil. Both of them have had exceptional experiences, with Wolfgang emphasizing the importance of widening our areas of expertise, and Eve advising us not to give up on our dreams (see also her interview on the Node).

Being a recent member of SFBD, I was also looking forward to the ‘General Assembly’ meeting during the conference, though with a bit of apprehension: I only know ‘survival-French’ – fading progressively in the backdrop of exposure to German – and wasn’t sure if that would be enough to follow discussions without bothering someone for help with translation. To my surprise, this session was in English, and to my ignorance, it has been so already since the previous few iterations (including the presentation slides): a clear sign that (at least) the community of French Developmental Biologists is steadfast in welcoming international participants, especially in the current turbulent times.

The meeting also struck a nice balance between intense scientific sessions and free time to digest it all. By the end of the meeting, many participants, including me, felt overwhelmed by the flood of information, rescued only by the walks on the beach and small excursions to the Calanques nearby. With minor exceptions, the weather was on our side, with plenty of sunshine and fresh Mediterranean breeze. The Welcome cocktails and Gala dinner on the rooftop of the conference venue were a welcome nicety enjoyed by everyone.

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