The Genetics Unzipped podcast is back for 2021 with a new series of stories from the world of genes, genomes and DNA, from the history of genetics to the latest cutting-edge research.

In our first episode we take a look back at the discovery of messenger RNA, or mRNA, in the 1960s. There are some big names involved – Francis Crick, Sydney Brenner, Francois Jacob and more – but who actually discovered this vital molecular messenger? And why did nobody win a Nobel Prize for it?

Then we come right up to the present day to look at mRNA vaccines for COVID-19, which have been developed at breakneck speed to tackle the pandemic. We find out how mRNA vaccines work, how they were developed so fast for COVID-19, and how this new technology might change the face of immunization and public health in the future.

Genetics Unzipped is the podcast from The Genetics Society. Full transcript, links and references available online at GeneticsUnzipped.com.

Subscribe from Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And head over to GeneticsUnzipped.com to catch up on our extensive back catalogue.

If you enjoy the show, please do rate and review on Apple podcasts and help to spread the word on social media. And you can always send feedback and suggestions for future episodes and guests to podcast@geneticsunzipped.com Follow us on Twitter – @geneticsunzip

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The laboratory of Pamela Geyer invites mature, highly motivated candidates to apply for a position as postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Iowa. These fellows will join a research team interested in understanding the impact of nuclear architecture in stem cell survival and aging. Prominent changes in nuclear morphology occur during physiological aging and in disease. Our recent data demonstrate that the asymmetrically dividing germline stem cells (GSCs) in the Drosophila ovary employ a non-canonical mode of mitosis that sensitizes these stem cells to defects in proteins comprising the nuclear lamina, a protein network that build contacts with the genome to regulate transcription, replication and DNA repair. Current studies are focused on exploring the mechanisms involved in execution of this non-canonical mitosis and implications for stem cell health and longevity. In addition to driving science at the bench, the fellow will be introduced to the network of collaborative scientists with shared interests in defining biological processes critical for development and disease. The Geyer laboratory is located in a state-of-the-art facility that features a collaborative atmosphere to foster innovation, and is part of the Carver College of Medicine, a highly ranked biomedical research institute. The University of holds a long tradition of diversity, equity, and inclusion, a transition that began upon its founding with being the first public university to admit men and women on an equal basis (1855). Iowa City is a medium-sized, culturally rich city with vibrant communities in the arts, sciences, and literature. Interested applicants should contact Pamela Geyer (pamela-geyer[at]uiowa.edu), including a letter of interest, a CV and contact information of three references.

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Cellular differentiation describes the process by which embryonic cells become different from one another, acquiring distinct identities and specialised functions. These cells are responding to signals that modify the dynamics of the interacting key genes controlling the cell’s state. The arrival of more and better single cell data opens up new opportunities for better understanding of this cellular decision-making. However, to realise these opportunities, new mathematical and statistical tools are needed to characterise the cellular dynamics and to organise, analyse and visualise such data. This workshop aims at reviewing the current work in this area.

Speakers:

Dr J. Briscoe: Dynamics of gene regulatory networks and the precision of developmental patterning

Dr G. Dupont: Model of cell fate decision in the early mouse embryo

Dr P. François: Clock, waves, evolution: geometry of vertebrae patterning

Dr M. Saez: Gene-free landscape models for development

Dr E. Siggia: Embryology: Real and Imagined

This free workshop will run online the afternoon of Monday the 25th of January (UK time). To register and get more information visit our website.

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Announcement of post-doc scholarship at the Division of Pediatrics, Lund University, Sweden

The importance of HIF-2a for neural crest cell migration and its connection to tumor initiation 

It is well known that hypoxia, i.e. low oxygen levels, predicts poor outcome and metastatic burden in a variety of solid tumors. Transcriptionally active Hypoxia Inducible Factors (HIFs) and their downstream target genes orchestrate the cellular adaptation to increased oxygen demands in both normal and tumor cells (Hammarlund, Flashman, Mohlin & Licausi, Science 2020). We have recently shown that the cancer-associated protein HIF-2a is important for trunk neural crest stem cell development (Niklasson et al., Dev Dyn 2020). In this project, we are interested in investigating how HIF-2a affects early and late neural crest cell migration, population of organs and how this connects to childhood tumor initiation.

The purpose of this scholarship is for the candidate to deepen their skills in the field of molecular physiology. The candidate will acquire theoretical knowledge within the areas of developmental and tumor biology as well as learn a set of methodologies including microdissections, cell culture, cloning, virus work and analyzing omics data. The candidate will learn to handle several different research organisms, including chick embryos and in vivo mouse models. 

Preliminary start date: 1st of March 2021 (to be discussed) 

Supervisor/contact person: 

Sofie Mohlin 

+46-704647998 

sofie.mohlin@med.lu.se 

https://www.tcr.lu.se/research-groups/molecular-physiology 

Twitter: @mohlinlab

Qualifications: 

– To be eligible for a post-doc scholarshop at Lund University the recipient must hold a PhD degree within a relevant field. The PhD degree must not be from Lund University. The PhD degree must not be older than three years. The applicant must not have been employed at Lund University in the past two years. 

– Obtained PhD within cancer research, developmental biology or equivalent. 

– Published papers in peer-reviewed international journals 

– Fluent in written and spoken English 

The following qualifications are advantageous but not necessary: 

Experience in:

• Analyzing omics data (e.g., RNA sequencing and mass spectrometry) 
• In vivo models (e.g., chick embryo, mice, rats, zebrafish) 
• Wet lab techniques
• Imaging 

The candidate will be part of a team, but at the same time needs to be independent enough to lead their own projects. The candidate should be fluent in English and have experience from oral and written scientific communication. 

We put great emphasis on personal suitability. 

Written application, including reference number, is to be sent via e-mail to the supervisor and must include the following: 

– CV 

– Personal letter stating the reasons why the study suits the applicant (maximum one page) 

– List of publications 

– References (2) 

– PhD diploma 

Application deadline: February 8, 2021 

Reference number: V 2021/24

https://www.med.lu.se/intramed/stipendier_anslag_fraan_fakulteten/#item_148236

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This is the first in a new series on the Node profiling scientists who do art (or artists who do science). We’ll learn about why they do it, their artistic influences, their techniques and tips. We’ll be looking for new people to feature in this series throughout the year – whatever kind of art you do, from sculpture to embroidery to music to drawing, if you want to share it with the community just email thenode@biologists.com (nominations are also welcome!).

Our first profile is of Suyash Naik, a graduate student from the IST Austria, whose art we first saw on Twitter.

Where do you work and what are you currently working on?

I study at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, with the supervision of Dr Carl-Phillip Heisenberg and Dr Edouard Hannezo. I’m currently in the third year of my graduate studies working to understand the mechanics of epithelium movement during zebrafish embryonic development. I am especially interested in understanding the intermediate filament cytoskeleton’s role as the epithelium spreads during gastrulation. For this I am learning to apply various interesting biophysical techniques that our labs have developed, such as laser cutting and imaging.

Has science always been an important part of your life?

I’d say curiosity and learning new things have been important aspects of my life. I grew up with an interest in natural history and dinosaur fossils, and also liked watching and reading popular science fiction. Naturally I was always interested in learning more about science and understanding the world we live in. This interest was fuelled further by great teachers and incredible opportunities that allowed me to do the things I do day to day now. For instance, in school I took part in a group that used to plan and do simple experiments revolving around DNA. This led me to pursue an education at IISER where I had the opportunity to explore and work in different labs. 

And what about art – were you always interested in drawing? What or who are your artistic influences?

I have been interested in sketching and photography but I have never had the opportunity to pursue any formal education in them. But recently I made more of an effort to consistently create and also be more forthcoming with the things I’m doing and have done in the past, as a way to have an outlet for creativity and to track my mental health during these stressful times. For me what is most interesting and important is the change of perspective I gain when viewing something as an artistic inspiration rather than a scientific curiosity. I have always enjoyed visual art like paintings and animations. The lockdowns this year also greatly increased my appreciation for  street art. Watching great pieces from some of my favourite artists like Nekro and Illunis has been a real joy during lockdown walks along the Danube canal this year. But most importantly of all I draw inspiration from my creative friends who make some truly amazing artwork! 

“For me what is most interesting and important is the change of perspective I gain when viewing something as an artistic inspiration rather than a scientific curiosity.”

How do you approach your art?

I mostly use digital mediums currently as I have some familiarity with them, but I am still hoping to learn different types of techniques to create sciart. I am looking forward to learning more about art techniques in the coming years and creating/experimenting different styles. I usually enjoy colorful and futuristic looking artwork and that is something I especially want to learn how to create.

Tell me about your zebrafish artwork? 

For the zebrafish artwork, I had thought of the design long ago to sort of combine the ideas that I wanted to base my PhD around and things that were ongoing in my lab at the moment.

The embryonic part of the embryo is an artistic representation of a model epithelium. Recently in my lab a few great publications (such as this article by Schwayer et.al, this article by Boocock et. al., this and this review by Shamipour et.al.) explore how flows of different cytoskeletal proteins play an important role during development. This made me think of some acrylic pour that a friend of mine had made, and I wanted to incorporate that as a component of the artwork. That leads to the flowy backdrop of color that exists in the picture. The yolk over which the epithelium moves is a collection of nutrition for the developing embryo in the form of collected yolk granules. These were represented in spirals depicting these granules.

And what about the Hydra pictures – I think both have reference to historical pieces or myths?

The Hydra pictures were some that I had created working on a project during my undergraduate studies.

I was fascinated by the role of mechanics in the somersault motion of the organism. Of course it was a running joke in my group that the organism had gotten its name from its incredible ability to regenerate and hence was mythical. This along with the fact that I was enjoying working alongside Leonardo da Vinci as an assassin in virtual gamespace (Assassin’s creed series) made me want to depict Hydra as a part of something you would find in his work. I felt drawn to the Vitruvian man as it was very a mechanical description of the human body. 

When the work was published we also wanted to create something to celebrate the occasion and for trying to get selected as a cover article. For that I made another similarly mythological/gaming themed piece as a succession for the vitruvian Hydra. Hence I decided to go again along similar themes and went with a celtic Norse mythological reference. I hence depicted the major steps in the somersault movement at the branches and roots of the world tree, Yggdrasil. The sun rises in the background shining light onto the pioneering steps in a ‘primitive’ organism performing a motion on a solid surface.

What are you thinking of working on next?

I am looking forward to getting back to some exciting experiments I have planned for next year, maybe those would drive some new interesting ideas. I do not have a concrete plan of where I am going next with my art studies but what I do know is that I want to create and learn as much as I can!  

(17 votes)

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We are looking for a highly motivated PhD student interested in zebrafish brain development, RNA metabolism, gene editing and transcriptomic analyses to join the Nikolaou Lab at the University of Bath. The deadline for applications is 31st January 2021. The anticipated start date for this project is early October 2021. Applicants should hold, or expect to receive, a First Class or good Upper Second-Class Honours degree (or the equivalent). A master’s level qualification would also be advantageous. UK and EU candidates (with settled or pre-settled status in the UK) applying for this project will be considered for a University Research Studentship which will cover UK/EU tuition fees, a training support grant of £1,000 per annum and a tax-free maintenance allowance at the UKRI Doctoral Stipend rate (£15,285 in 2020-21) for a period of up to 3.5 years.

Brief description of the project:

Regulation of pre-mRNA splicing plays a significant role in neurons by diversifying the proteome and modulating gene expression during development and in response to physiological cues. Although most pre-mRNA processing reactions are thought to occur in the nucleus, numerous RNA splicing regulators are also found in neurites, however, very little is known about their extra-nuclear functions. Our recent work showed for the first time that the non-nuclear pool of a major spliceosome component (SNRNP70) modulates the production of alternative spliced mRNA isoforms essential for motor connectivity and protects transcripts from degradation.

This project aims to investigate further the extra-nuclear activities of SNRNP70 in the context of neuronal connectivity in zebrafish. The ease of genetic manipulations together with the translucency and small size of their offspring allows us to monitor neural cell behaviour and function and observe changes in neuronal connectivity. We will use a range of genetic tools, including transgenic over-expression of cytoplasmic SNRNP70 and nuclear-only SNRNP70 zebrafish knock-in lines to establish developmental functions attributed to the cytoplasmic pool of SNRNP70. The results from this project will contribute to our understanding of how local RNA metabolism in axons contributes to the normal development of neural connections in the brain.

How to apply:

If you are interested, please apply by following the link on FindAPhD website: https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/the-functions-of-extra-nuclear-rna-splicing-regulators-during-neuronal-connectivity-in-zebrafish/?p128252.

Informal inquiries are welcomed and should be directed to Dr Nikolas Nikolaou (nn456@bath.ac.uk)

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The International C. elegans Conference takes place every two years and features cutting-edge research in a diverse array of topics, including physiology, neurobiology, development, evolution, behavior, aging, ecology, gene regulation, genomics, and more. For 2021, #Worm21 has been reimagined for a virtual platform and will focus on early career researchers at every stage.

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Recorded talks and Q&As are now available here.

We’re happy to confirm the next webinar in our Development presents… series will be chaired by our Editor Swathi Arur (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center), who has brought together talks that span her interests in C. elegans development, the germline and cell signalling.

Wednesday 13 January 2021 – 16:00 GMT

Brandon Scott Carpenter (from David Katz’s lab at Emory University School of Medicine)

‘C. elegans establishes germline versus soma by balancing inherited histone methylation’

Hayao Ohno (from Zhirong Bao’s lab at the Sloan Kettering Institute)

‘Small RNAs couple embryonic developmental programs to gut microbes’

Swann Floc’hlay (formerly in Denis Thieffry’s lab at IBENs)

‘Deciphering and modelling the TGF-beta signalling interplays specifying the dorsal-ventral axis of the sea urchin embryo’

To register for the event, go to

https://virtual.biologists.com/e/development-presents-3/register

The webinar will be held in Remo, our browser-based conferencing platform – after the talks you’ll have the chance to meet the speakers and other participants at virtual conference tables. If you can’t make it on the day, talks will be available to watch for a couple of weeks after the event (look out for details on the Node).

For more information about what to expect in Remo, go to

thenode.biologists.com/devpres/

Feel free to share this poster with your colleagues:

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Updated 11 January. Let us know if we missed anything

Various organisations and looser assemblies of locked down researchers have begun to put together online seminar and talk series, many of which are open to anyone (usually with registration), and many of which also have previous talks recorded.

Here’s a list of what we’ve found recently, developmental biology and adjacent – please let us know if we missed anything so we can keep it up to date. For upcoming virtual developmental biology conferences/symposia, see our Events calendar page.

First up from us is Development presents…, the webinar series hosted each month by a different Development Editor which will be a platform for early career researchers to share their work. As well as the talks, you also have the chance to meet the speakers and other participants at interactive video tables – giving the developmental biology community the chance to network virtually.

The next webinar will be Wednesday 13 January, 16.00 GMT, hosted by Swathi Arur and featuring talks from Brandon Scott Carpenter, Hayao Ohno and Swann Floc’hlay.

SDB monthly postdoc seminar series.

Next talk: February 12, Melissa LaBonty & Adam Isabella

Morphogenesis Seminar Series, University of Cambridge

Next talk: January 18, Anna Erzberger

Optical Biology 2021 Seminar Series

Next talk: January 27, Pavel Tomancak

New PIs In Cell-Dev-Biol forum

Next talk: January 15th, Felicity Davis. Check out the poster above for full 2021 list – all the way to December!

RNA, Stem Cells, and Technology in Development – China-Korea-Japan Joint Symposium on Developmental Studies

February 1 13:30 – 18:30(JST/KST), 12:30 – 17:30(CST)

Teaching Dev Bio Forum

With Michael Barresi – next session is January 28 – email mbarresi@smith.edu to gain access.

MiR@W Day: Modelling and measuring the landscapes of early embryonic development

January 25 – The workshop will run from 14:00 until 18:15

Neural Crest Research Colloquia

Next talk: January 19, Marcos Simoes-Costa

Weinstein Cardiovascular Development & Regeneration

Next talk tbc

Zebrafish Disease Models Society Virtual Seminars

Next talk: January 12, Xiao Zhao, Rosa Uribe and Olov Andersson

Drosophila Methods Workshop

January 19

Vertebrate Gastrulation Zoom Talks

Next talk: January 14, Ray Keller & Karen Kasza

QMUL Epigenetics Hub Webinars

Next talk: January 12, Stephan Beck.

Plantae Presents – A New Global Plant Science Talk Series

Next talk: January 20 – Short talks on specialised metabolites.

PlantPostdocs Seminar Series

Now accepting applications for Feb-April

GARNet-Presents Plant Science Webinar

Next talk: January 12, Sarah Blackford

Flatworm Fridays – a trainee-centered virtual series focused on flatworms and related critters

Next talk: February 26

Spiraliabase Virtual Lab Meetings

Next meeting: 11 February, SEM and TEM imaging.

Cnidofest Zoom Seminars

Next talks: January 20, Chiara Sinigaglia & Dylan Faltine-Gonzales

Fragile Nucleome – online discussion group for scientists interested in chromatin and gene regulation

Next talk: January 13, Maggie Chasse & Fred Winston

2020 BSCB GenSoc UK Cilia Network e-Symposium

Next talk: January 12, Muneyoshi Ichikawa, Sónia Gomes Pereira, Monica Veneres, Alexandre Dumoulin, Thao Phan, Philippe Bastin

World Wide Neuro – Neuroscience seminars online

Next devbio talk: January 11, Ryusuke Niwa

Neuro Zoom: lively neuroscience research talks every week

Next talk: Janurary 11: Kaiwen He & Juan Song

BPPB (Biological Physics/Physical Biology) Seminars

Next talk: January 15, Robijn Bruinsma

Blood and Bone Seminar Series

Next talk: January 12, Craig Morrell

International Zebrafish Society Webinars

Next talk: January 14, Evolutionary Studies:
Just Under the Surface: Leveraging Zebrafish to Understand the Interplay Between Evolution and Development

Cell Size & Growth

Next talks: January 19, Xili Lui.

Cell Migration Virtual Seminars

Nucleus Science Talks

Muscle science talks

Next talk: January 11, Helen Blau

Motors in Quarantine

Next talk: January 13, Helene Bouvrais & Arne Gennerich

Aging Science Talks: Science for the Community

Next talk: January 20, How aging and disease drive stem cell dysfunction

Symbiosis weekly talks

MicroSeminar- Free Web-based Microbiology Seminar Series

PombeTalks

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