In the second 2024 webinar, Development Editor Liz Robertson (University of Oxford) hosts two early career researchers studying organogenesis.

Tuesday 27 February – 15:00 GMT

At the discretion of the speakers, the webinar will be recorded for viewing on demand. To see the other webinars scheduled in our series, and to catch up on previous talks, please visit: thenode.biologists.com/devpres

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In line with preLights’ ongoing postLights initiative, one of the preLights Ambassadors, Martin Estermann, has decided to create and host a new webinar series focusing on the journey of the preprint. This involves a series of virtual webinars featuring different researchers (often early-career researchers) who posted their manuscripts as a preprint before or during the peer review process.

The goal of this webinar series is to highlight the benefits of preprinting to the research community and to discuss relevant examples both within and outside the preLights community.

Three webinars were chaired by Martin in December 2023, which featured three preprints that have all been covered by preLights.

One of the webinars discussed a preprint from the group of Laura Kerosuo, titled ‘Maintenance of pluripotency in the entire ectoderm enables neural crest formation‘, followed by a Q&A with preLighter Andrew Montequin, who covered Laura’s work on preLights last year.

You can catch up on all three webinars on preLights.

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Back in early 2013, Olivier Pourquie (Development’s then Editor-in-Chief) and I were working hard to integrate stem cell biology into Development. Reading papers and attending conferences, much of the focus at the time was on how principles of development could be harnessed to improve stem cell differentiation protocols, often with the goal of using those derived cells for more medically-relevant purposes. But we were also beginning to see a new trend emerging: the desire to use in vitro stem cell approaches to really understand human development. Organoids had only recently been developed, and the range of tools available was limited (single cell sequencing was in its infancy), but we could clearly see the potential of this burgeoning field.

From this, the idea for Development’s first Journal Meeting “From Stem Cells to Human Development” was born, and in September 2014, around 120 scientists gathered together at Wotton House in Surrey. The event enabled researchers working on a wide range of organ systems and questions, but all facing a common set of difficulties associated with working with human cells and tissues, to come together and discuss both the challenges and their potential solutions. The event also provided an opportunity to discuss the ethical considerations around working with human stem cells and primary tissues; looking back at my notes from that first meeting, and reading the articles we published as a result of it (Hyun, 2015 and Hermeren, 2015), it’s striking to me that the ethical debate at the time focussed largely on human-animal chimeras – the idea and potential consequences of generating stem cell-derived integrated embryo models were barely discussed. A decade on, and such models are very much at the forefront of the community’s mind.

At the time, there were no other conferences focussed exclusively on human development, and the enthusiasm for bringing this growing community together was clear. To answer this desire, Development has turned this event into a biennial meeting, and we’re delighted to announce that registration for the sixth ‘From Stem Cells to Human Development’ meeting is now open. Having attended every iteration since the meeting series’ inception, it’s been a real pleasure to see how both the field and the community have grown. Work with human stem cells and primary tissues holds huge promise both to understand our own developmental origins and to develop therapeutics, and the rate of progress has been impressive. I’m excited to see what we will learn at this September’s meeting, and I invite those of you with an interest in this dynamic and important field to apply to join the conference!

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All flavours of a conference – in-person, online, or maybe hybrid?

Thinking back to my first conference, it was a confusing experience for me. It happened well into my PhD around the end of the second year. Before that, I would prepare the posters, but it was my supervisors who would go to the conference and present them. The only directions I got for my first conference were to stay at my poster and answer questions.  It took me a couple of conferences, talking with friends, and internet surfing to crack the enigma of these scientific gatherings. I realised that conferences are much less about diligently listening to everything that is presented and much more about wondering, sharing, and learning.

Once I understood the rules, conferences felt like an ocean of information, with unexpected treasure findings waiting in the middle of a dive into a topic you have chosen on a whim. I can’t even count how many times I would go into a room, listen to a series of talks, and suddenly hear the solution to the problem I had been having for some time or a confirmation of my idea that sounded crazy.

I was in the process of figuring out how to network at conferences when COVID-19 turned everything online. And I was all in for this new experience. Now, after having a fair share of both online and in-person conferences I am ready to summarise what is the difference and what works or not so much.

The structure – what is easy to transfer to online and what is challenging

Online conferences mostly follow the same structure as the in-person conferences:

• opening remarks
• plenary lectures
• multiple parallel oral talk sessions
• poster session (not all online conferences)
• industry booths/workshops (not all conferences)
• closing remarks

Lectures and talks are easy to transfer to online settings; the talks are usually prerecorded or live, depending on the technical abilities of a conference. The part which is difficult to transfer to online settings is poster presentations. In-person conferences usually have many printed posters (sometimes e-posters displayed on a monitor) in one place and let people wander around with a book of abstracts. In online conferences, I saw two approaches.

1. Try to replicate the experience of the onsite conference by creating a virtual space (like gathertown) where attendees can move their virtual selves to wander around.
2. Give each poster presenter a very short talk or flash presentation (generally within 5 min) with a couple of minutes for questions.

In my experience, the first approach works well for small conferences, where you can easily read abstracts for all the posters in a short period of time. The positive point of this setup is that you can stay with the poster you like for as long as you want, giving you the freedom to have interesting conversations on the topic you like. When the number of posters is huge, it becomes difficult technically, as not everyone has a super-fast internet connection, and it is just difficult to navigate on a computer screen.

For some people, the second approach may be more logical. It allows attendees to hear the content of all posters in a structured manner, so you don’t miss anything interesting. However, having only several minutes for questions is rarely enough, and if you want to connect with a speaker, you will need to try catching them online afterward. So, in the case of the second approach, I wonder if there is a need to make a poster or just turn it into a short presentation with slides (which, to be fair, some conferences do).

The networking – difficult both in-person and online

For me, the biggest structural difference between in-person and online conferences comes from the way networking is organised. In-person conferences usually provide tea and coffee breaks when you can catch up with the person you were listening to right outside of the door or bump into some acquaintances, not to mention that there are some social events like dinners or workshops, which are specifically created for networking. Not that it makes networking easy; it just gives you much higher chances to strike up a conversation. There will always be an extroverted person who will go around and stir up some conversations. Hopefully, it will be your friend, and you will tag along (it was my strategy for networking in the early days of being a researcher 😉).

Thanks to the pandemic, I had a fair share of online and hybrid events (conferences, workshops, panel discussions), some of which I organised myself. My conclusion is that networking online is always challenging. In the case of a hybrid setting, when the conference is happening both in-person and online, the in-person and online participants are often not quite aware of each other’s presence, which creates two different audiences and the need to work with them separately. A lot of organisers naturally focus on an in-person audience, with no facilitators for online participants, resulting in a lack of networking and a feeling of being left out. Even in 100% online conferences, where you would usually have chats, forums, or virtual spaces, the absence of facilitators or specifically designed networking activities usually results in difficulties with networking.

The main reason, I guess, is that people are used to listening to something online, but not to communicating. Even in person, it may be difficult to master the courage to go to a person, introduce yourself, and start a conversation. It is several times harder when you don’t see their face and have no visual cues to rely on to see their expression and reactions so that you can understand whether they are up for a conversation, do they like where this is going, are they bored, do you need to finish, or can you continue. As a result – you give up even before trying.

One of my greatest experiences with online communication was Zeroverse’s online workshop on carbon literacy. The structure of the workshop included lectures, which were divided into several parts, and breakout sessions after each part. Breakout rooms had only 4-5 people, and all cameras were on. The participants also had a specific task for the breakout session and a general script of how to start a conversation announced by the host (introduce yourself, say your opinion on the matter, summarise what everyone said, and choose a representative to present). The tasks and groups were designed in a way that each person would need to talk. I found that it was easier to talk and overcome the first shyness when there was a system of communication.

Why not just participate in-person?

Because it seems that it is difficult to organise hybrid events, and there are many troubles for online participants, I want to talk about the reasons why you may choose online over in-person participation. And why I think that, as a community, we need more hybrid conferences rather than returning to in-person only. 

Financial reasons. There are some obvious reasons. Skyrocketing prices for everything: participation fee, airplane/train tickets, hotel stay. Now I often hear that, for example, in Europe, people try to encourage participating in local conferences or traveling by train. It is a good initiative if you live in Europe or North America. But I live in Japan, which is only at the beginning of its journey to create an international scientific space. Not many international conferences choose to be in Japan because it is not an easy destination. Many local conferences are only in the Japanese language, which means that you can participate only if you have quite a high Japanese language ability. In many cases, even if there is no requirement to present your work in Japanese if you present in English, people will generally try to avoid you, as they don’t feel comfortable speaking English. So, if you want to be part of the bigger international scientific community, you would be forced to participate in conferences that are not in your country and would need to fly there. And the prices of airplane tickets from Japan to Europe at the moment are astonishing, especially with the weakening yen.

Prices are one of the reasons the conference world seems extremely unequal. So, it is always great to see that some conferences choose destinations like Africa, Asia, or Latin America as places for their international conferences. But another obvious answer to the problem – is to host hybrid conferences with lower participation fees for online participation.

Financial reasons were also one of the main reasons I decided to join my latest conference – EMBL Symposium “Organoids: modelling organ development and disease in 3D culture” online, rather than in person in Germany. But were there any other reasons? For me – yes.

Communication reasons. Online participation allows you to be in a comfortable place. Usually, I would participate from home, where I can sit comfortably (which sometimes looks like half-lying on the sofa or snacking at the dinner table or sitting down on the floor and petting my cat), be relaxed, which creates an atmosphere where I personally can concentrate easier and feel more comfortable asking questions. In my experience, I ask many more questions in online settings than in onsite ones, and I pinpointed the reason – the ability to type it rather than the necessity to hold your hand up and become the focus of the whole room’s attention is what makes it easier for me. Now, I do understand that this is not true for everyone. I do know that for some people, it is difficult to concentrate at home. I just want to point out that people like me exist, and we also want to attend conferences, feel included, and communicate with others. I would actually go even further and propose that even on-site conferences have a chat option where you can type the questions during the talk and opt for the session chair to read your question rather than ask it yourself.

One of the nice touches of the Organoid Symposium was that panel administrators treated both online and onsite questions equally and tried to ask them in the order of appearance. They also transferred all the unanswered questions in the chat due to time constrains to the designated forum and actively encouraged speakers to go check and answer the remaining questions on forum.

Effort reasons. Conferences are an intense experience. I am quite perplexed about how we came to the programs that include multiple parallel sessions and the schedule from 8 am to 8 pm. I probably need to do some research in that direction, too 😉. Maybe it reduces the price of the event, but at what cost for our brains? Even if you consider conferences fun, a 12-hour time frame is exhausting. But in reality, conferences counted as work. It requires a lot of listening, thinking, understanding, and concentration. I guess not all people are participating all day long, but in my experience, there are so many interesting things going on that when you are done marking all the sessions you are interested in, you have a very packed schedule. And at the end of the day, you feel overwhelmed with information. Online conferences allow you to listen to at least part of the content on demand! Which allows you to plan in a much healthier way. You check all the sessions you want to listen to and then check which of them are available on demand. Attend only the ones that are not available, and then listen to others in your free time. This is exactly what I did last month when I participated in an Organoid conference online. I’ve listened to what was available only in live streaming and then spent three weeks listening to everything else that was available on demand. Why so long? Because I was listening to one to two presentations a day and not every day, only when I knew I was ready for the new information.

Space reasons. Continuing on the comfort and overwhelming experiences — there are no overwhelming crowds of people when you join online. I know that many people love to be in a bustling place with everyone talking and mingling, but I am one of those people who get tired very quickly in these environments. The flashing slides in a dark room, people talking everywhere, especially during poster sessions, and the constant flow of information with often no planned activities for relaxation or proper rest (let’s be honest, 10 min break between 1 h sessions which you are supposed to spend on connecting with people or checking and going to the next session is hardly a rest). It is often difficult to find a quiet spot to recharge and have peace when attending in-person conferences. On the other hand, online conferences easily solve this problem. You have a 5- or 10-minute break – mute your laptop and have your quiet time. You can have a short breathing session, go talk with your partner, spend several moments with your pet, or just stare into a wall if that is what you need. Which, in my case, leads to enjoying the whole process much more. I can take a break when I feel that I need it. Going back to my last online conference on Organoids, I think that what they did great was give more time for breaks. The coffee break was 30 minutes, and the lunch was 1 hour and 30 minutes. The online participants would also see a banner that proposed yoga or some exercise to do during the breaks. I think that this kind of planning shows respect for our body’s needs. It takes into consideration that the intense brain work is still demanding on our bodies, and we need our rest.

Some of my favourite talks at the Organoid conference. I also wanted to talk a bit more about the Organoid conference, as it is because of this conference I decided to write about online participation.

The Organoid conference was also the first small conference I attended. Usually, as I said, there are a lot of multiple parallel sessions, but for the Organoid conference, there was only one. What I’ve realized is that this way, organizers can control the program much better, which means that the quality of the talks was fantastic! There were so many interesting results, ideas, and inspiration! Of course, conferences that allow more participants, even though the results may not be as groundbreaking, are also important; they just have different goals. But now I fully understand why several senior professors would recommend attending specific small conferences to keep in touch with the latest trends.

It was so good to hear Madeline Lancaster addressing the problem of reproducibility in biological research. The usual approach to the problem is – just to check several lots of cells and choose the ones that work. Which is a kind of “treat symptoms” versus “treat the cause” kind of solution. It does not answer the question, “Why do some cells work, and others don’t?” Can we really call it reproducible if you need to try several makers and lots of cells until you find the one that allows you to reproduce the results? It was refreshing to see a person who decided to answer the question: “Why are some iPS cells allowed to form organoids and others not? Is there a way to turn a bad iPS cell line into a good one? What is the mechanism behind all this?”. I do hope that more researchers will go into such details. As a researcher from the tissue engineering field, I feel that too many articles are concentrated on their techniques and know-how rather than on the fundamental process underlying all of it. This sometimes creates bizarre situations when some techniques work only in some labs, with certain reagents, and in the hands of certain people and practically cannot be replicated.

Another one of my favourite takeaways from the conference – is the video of the T-cell killing cancer from Anne C. Rios group. And I love it for completely unscientific reasons. It often feels futile to try and change something. There are so many inequalities around us. And sometimes it feels like nothing can be changed, nothing can be done. But looking at how one brave and energetic “Super engager” T-cell destroys the whole clump of cancer cells and, in the process, influences and triggers another not-so-energetic T-cell to go and do the same… Sometimes, it’s baffling how such human stories can happen even at the level of cells😊 You can change things; it is tough to do it on your own, but what you are doing can inspire others, and with time, you may even get help from unexpected sources, who will notice what you are doing and will be like – this is cool, this is what we need, let’s try to find a way to help.

Here you can read the article by Anne C. Rios group and check out the supplementary video 1, my favourite part starts around 1:45.

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What is this?

This is a movie produced in 1964, which describes the procedure to achieve nucleo-transfer in the frog egg (nowadays referred to as ‘cloning’). The demonstration is performed by Dr Tom Elsdale, a distinguished embryologist who mostly worked at the MRC Human genetic unit in Edinburgh. Elsdale had spent some time in the USA to learn this experiment after the founding paper of the field was published by Briggs and King in 1952. This technology was further used by John Gurdon to carry out the first and Nobel prizewinning cloning of animals by using nuclei from adult differentiated cells. This movie echoed a publication describing the approach and published in 1960 by Elsdale, Gurdon and Fischberg in JEEM, the former name for ‘Development’. It was likely used for teaching purpose, as well as to facilitate the learning of this difficult manipulation by fellow scientists.

Where was this found?

This movie was in the archives of the Geneva Zoological Institute (Station de Zoologie Expérimentale) in Switzerland. In the 70s, this department was chaired by Michael (Mishka) Fischberg, who had been John Gurdon’s PhD supervisor in Cambridge, UK, and senior author of the paper mentioned above. Fischberg was a great scientist and a good man who had collected and developed the largest collection of Xenopus species in Europe to study developmental and evolutionary questions. In 2006, as a chair of this department, I had the difficult task to close this Institute (where I had been a student) and move it to more modern buildings downtown. Fortunately, the movie had been kept by Charles Thiebault, a close collaborator of Mishka Fischberg.

How was this taken?

This is a 16mm film, which was recently transferred onto a CD format. The 16mm camera must have been positioned on top of binocular objectives, yet it is not shown as to how this was done in the recorded demonstration and hence the exact recording set up is unknown (any comment on this?).

Why should people watch this movie?

This movie illustrates how classical embryology was carried out 60 years ago and gives an idea of how pioneers in the field could overcome the many difficulties caused by experiments as fundamental as nucleo-transfer, for example. You will appreciate the many small tricks used here and there, the extraordinary timer, the pre-AI animations and summary, as well as Elsdale’s experimental precision, despite being one-eyed due to an accident when he was a kid. A special mention is given to his pullover and to the brilliant soundtrack starting with croaking frogs.

References

Briggs R, King TJ. Transplantation of Living Nuclei From Blastula Cells into Enucleated Frogs’ Eggs. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1952 May;38(5):455-63. doi: 10.1073/pnas.38.5.455. PMID: 16589125; PMCID: PMC1063586.

Elsdale TR, Gurdon JB, Fischberg M. A description of the technique for nuclear transplantation in Xenopus laevis. J Embryol Exp Morphol. 1960 Dec;8:437-44. PMID: 13726553.

(3 votes)

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In the latest episode of the Genetics Unzipped podcast, we’re exploring the impact that Gregor Mendel and his populariser William Bateson have had on the past century of genetics, and asking whether there could have been a more Weldonian view of the world.

 “It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that we would end up with our knowledge of inheritance organised around the idea that in the first instance genes come in these two versions, dominance and recessive, and they’re associated with these unit characters, you know, yellowness, greenness, roundness, wrinkledness, cystic fibrosis, black… That categorical thinking I think is problematic, it’s problematic scientifically and it’s problematic socially.”

Prof. Greg Radick, author of Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology

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.

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

And please, take a moment to fill out our listener survey!

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Mayank Chugh’s post ‘Science is more than the sum of research’ struck a chord. A research associate at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and an aspiring poet in my spare time, I find a lot of value in communicating research to the public and often ponder on what it means to be a scientist. Driven by similar values to those expressed by Mayank, that science is more than science itself, I wrote the poem ‘Success in Science’ to air these thoughts.

About ‘Success in Science’

There are traditional measures of success in the research community, but should they be the only ways we define our success? The experiences that have stood out for me during my scientific career include working in a team from around the world, sharing ideas, teaching the next generation of scientists, communicating research to the public and, ultimately, being part of a bigger picture to improve the lives of patients. These are all, I think, fundamental to a functioning and successful research community, and are successes that we can all share and recognise. 

Success in Science

Success in science is hard to define,

What pops into your mind?

A Nobel Prize, the impact factor,

A finding that’s one of a kind?

Success is measured in more ways than one,

What does it mean to you?

With a different perspective we can find success

In not only the year but the everyday too.

*

We work in a team and voice our ideas,

Two heads are better than one.

All around the world we collaborate and share

To gain knowledge that is second to none.

We pass on our skills to the next generation,

Just as others have filled our own cup.

We mentor each other and throw down ladders,

To help others who are on their way up.

We communicate our research and our aims

To make the world a better place.

We share evidence and ask questions of own,

For an inquisitive mind there is always space.

Getting through each day can sometimes be a test,

Experiments don’t always go as planned.

But we pick ourselves up and think again and again,

As the more we persist, the more we understand.

For each day brings us a step closer,

Even through the triumphs and struggles,

Every experiment like a pin prick,

Gradually bursting the knowledge bubble.

*

Success in science we can all share,

Even in ways we may think are small.

For these make up the foundation of research,

So, let’s recognise and celebrate them all.

This poem is adapted from ‘Success in Science’, written as part of the University of Cambridge’s Creative Encounters Words project, a public engagement with research initiative led by David Cain. It was first published in the collection “The Hope of Knowing Love: Research Poems to Open Our World” and exhibited at the Cambridge Festival in Spring 2023. In this collection Kirsty used poetry to convey life as a scientist, her research on the childhood cancer neuroblastoma and the lived experiences of patients and their families.

(4 votes)

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In this SciArt profile, we get to know more about Elad Bassat, the scientist behind the artwork ‘Klimt-olotl’, which was chosen as both the Judges’ choice and People’s choice in the ‘Science-inspired art’ category of the Node-BSDB virtual art exhibition.

Can you tell us about your background and what you work on now?

I have been a regeneration enthusiast for the majority of my scientific career. Ever since I started my masters (and later my doctoral) work in the lab of Prof. Eldad Tzahor in the Weizmann Institute of Science, I was always fascinated how some animals can achieve amazing feats of regeneration while we cannot. I continued my regeneration journey moving to Vienna and becoming a post doctoral fellow in the lab of Elly Tanaka (a position I still hold today), essentially moving from working with mice to working with the cutest model organism in existence, the axolotl. Specifically, I am working on two different projects: what is the role of the extracellular matrix in axolotl limb regeneration and how does the axolotl regenerate its heart. I hope that in the near future I will be able to wrap up my projects and look for an independent investigator position in which I could combine my previous mouse experience with the axolotl work and study regeneration across species.

Were you always going to be a scientist?

In short, oh yeah!

In my high school, the Hebrew Gymnasium of Jerusalem, at the 9^th grade, the students are tasked with choosing their major subjects. This entails sitting and listening to, sometime boring and dry, descriptions of what will be taught by the teachers and as you can imagine, I also found it boring and tedious. However, one of the teachers, which taught Biology, told us: “Instead of telling you what I will teach you, I will show you what this could be useful for…” and then she told us about treating diseases and improving yields of crops and genetic engineering and… I was hooked.

And what about art – have you always enjoyed it?

I want to put an asterisk here – *compared to the amazing artists who participated in the competition, I consider myself a non-artist. I always enjoyed seeing art, but I was and still am very bad at this. My mother is very skilled in painting, jewelry making and other arts and crafts, so I dabbled in painting as a kid, but I was always inpatient and unhappy with myself when the straight line I wanted to draw turned out curved. So, for many years after this, I didn’t attempt to paint or do anything “artsy” again. During my university days, I started to play with digital art, mostly experimenting with photoshop and illustrator and then I identified the one thing I was missing when I was painting as child, an “undo” button. From this point on I started to generate models and illustrations for colleagues and for the labs I was working in. To this day, the majority of the art I generate is aimed to make my presentations more fun or to communicate my science better.

What or who are your most important artistic influences?

Honestly, I don’t think I have “most important” artistic influences, I appreciate specific pieces of art in museums and exhibitions, and I admire those who created them. For example, I visited museums in Vienna and saw beautiful works of the Austrian artist, Gustav Klimt. Following this, I went home and tried to copy his style and that is how “klimt-olotl” was born, combining my science model with the art I admired. Similarly, I visited the Albertina museum in Vienna and saw Pointillism paintings by Seurat and Signac which apart from being inspiration for amazing R-packages for bioinformatics, are artists I truly admire. I was so impressed with “the pink cloud” by Signac that I tried to draw with a similar style immediately when I got home only to fail miserably (although I am still practicing this technique).

I think I should also include one additional avenue of inspiration and that is the works of many Sci-Artists on twitter which I follow (such as @DrawImpacts, @maayanvisuals and @Ella_Maru). I often find the beautiful illustrations, models, and graphics they generate, truly inspiring.

Your painting ‘Klimt-olotl’ was both the People’s and the Judges’ choice in the BSDB-the Nodevirtual art exhibition. Can you tell us more about the story behind the artwork?

As I mentioned before, I currently live in Vienna and I enjoy visiting the many art museums we have in the city. As Gustav Klimt was an Austrian artist there are many locations in the city you could see his works and stylistic influence. About two years ago there was an interactive exhibition titled the “Klimt: the immersive experience” which we decided to go with my 3-year-old son, and he loved it. After questioning him a bit more he mentioned that he loved, what I would paraphrase, his color palette especially from the golden period. After that we went home and we started drawing together and he asked me to outline spirals and shapes that he would later color with the Klimt palette. After he went to bed, I took my tablet and started playing with the actual color palette and shapes used in “The Kiss”, “The Woman in Gold”, and “Death and Life” and noticed I am seeing a separation of water and land. From this point a few days have passed and my mind was focused on my scientific work and I thought about how axolotls have the same type of separation between water and land as they would normally would not metamorphose in nature, so it just clicked that they should be also represented in the image.

How do you make your art?

Apart from painting with my son (which is currently limited to painting unicorns), I only paint electronically using my tablet and computer. I would generate the image using the Apple pencil and then perform special functions, post-processing and add effects using photoshop and illustrator.

Does your art influence your science at all, or are they separate worlds?

I don’t think anything is really separated in my head. I can’t think of a specific example where seeing an art exhibition influenced me to run a specific experiment but when I see or make art my mind wonders and then new ideas are generated. In the end I think we are the sum of all our experiences, they are intermingled, and they shape the next decisions you make.

What are you thinking of working on next?

Honestly I don’t know, I haven’t drawn anything in the last few months and my motivation is down given what is happening in my home country. Since the 7^th of October attack on Israel I find it hard to think about what’s next.

Follow Elad on Twitter/X:

@EladBassat

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Nawseen Tarannum, postdoc, University of Manchester

While conference hunting in early 2023, I saw an advertisement for the 2^nd EDBC on the BSDB website. Given my love for cell and developmental biology, wanting to attend it was a no-brainer decision. Held from 25^th-28^th September 2023 in Oxford, the conference attracted developmental biologists from across Europe. Packed with a collection of great talks, posters and social events, this conference was unique for the science and how it was organised. In addition to Oxford, there were two hubs – Paris and Barcelona – from where talks were live-streamed and intertwined with the Oxford schedule. I’m not sure what technology gods the organisers and the AV team prayed to, but they managed to pull off the least technologically disruptive hybrid conference I’ve been to. Truly impressive. Now let’s turn to the real showstopper, the science.

Pilot

Season two of the conference started in the afternoon with an opening address from Paul Martin (BSDB chair). He promised fantastic talks prioritising early-career group leaders and researchers and the conference programme indeed delivered on this promise. He also introduced the winner of the Cheryll Tickle medal, a mid-career female scientist who has made outstanding contributions to the field. This year’s medal was awarded to Madeline Lancaster. She took us on a trip through her PhD and postdoc days before focusing on her lab’s interest in understanding how the human brain develops compared to other primates. Her work has identified that the tissue architecture of the developing brain impacts cell fate, with temporal progression from progenitors to neurons depending on the correct spatial positioning of cells (1).

Madeline’s presentation paved the way for other talks that afternoon that were based on “patterning”. During this session, I listened to Teresa Rayon talk about discrepancies in the developmental timescale of neural tube ventral patterning in mice and humans. She showed that although the process is conserved between both species, increased protein stability in human cells may explain our slower development (2). Jacqueline Tabler discussed skull morphogenesis in the context of a noncanonical form of cell motility. She showed that a collagen gradient drives osteoblast movement, divisions and differentiation towards a softer matrix with feedback between the stiffness gradient and cell fate controlling bone size (3). Markéta Kaucká Petersen elaborated on how her lab outlines the blueprint of cellular heterogeneity underlying craniofacial morphogenesis using single-cell genomics and transcriptomics.

The relatively short first day was brought to a close with a poster session featuring a virtual reality experience, designed by Shaping Destiny, involving dance forms that depict embryonic growth. Unfortunately, I missed this as I got too immersed in the poster session (recruiting people to my poster), but those who experienced it said it was good fun. Hopefully, I’ll be able to try it at the next EDBC (or another BSDB conference)!

Episode 2

After a well-needed sleep, day two began with some morning Tai chi led by in-house Shifu Paul Martin. Those of us who braved the drizzly outdoors witnessed the Shifu very meticulously yet hilariously demonstrate how we could potentially defend ourselves. I, however, was embarrassingly hopeless, and then it was time to join the first session of the day to remind myself of biology which I feel I am marginally better at compared to Tai chi.

Day two was all about the hybrid format with interdigitating talks between Oxford and Paris. We started with the “morphogenesis” session, where Magali Suzanne described how apoptotic cells exert apicobasal forces on the neighbouring tissue and actively contribute to neural tube bending (4). Similar forces are also generated during epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in Drosophila (5). I also listened to Diana Pinheiro explain how a gradient of Nodal signalling fractionates the zebrafish mesendoderm into highly protrusive leader cells and less protrusive followers. The leader cells readily undergo internalisation while they pull the followers inwards in a mechanism that preserves mesoderm patterning (6). An interesting talk by Thibaut Brunet introduced the multicellular choanoflagellate, Choanoeca flexa. These remarkable organisms form multicellular sheets of polarised cells reminiscent of an epithelial monolayer (7) and reversibly transition between the multicellular colony state and unicellular dormant cysts depending on environmental conditions. The session ended with a visually stunning talk from Kate McDole who has developed an advanced light sheet microscope to investigate mouse organ development. By applying machine learning to the images, her lab follows the journey of individual cells up to organogenesis (8). Interestingly, this microscope can track the embryo’s position at complex developmental stages and adapt for optimal imaging without requiring manual input. How I wish I could use this fancy smart scope for my experiments!

After a morning of fascinating talks, the afternoon provided the much-awaited opportunity to explore beautiful Oxford. Some of us visited the botanical garden while others went punting. I decided to see some pretty flowers and when I returned in two hours, my phone was brimming with photos of colourful petals while my airways were revved up with pollen. Thankfully, I did not let out one of my signature deafening sneezes to disrupt the upcoming talks.

The afternoon was exclusively dedicated to talks from Paris with the theme “Gene regulation”. The opening talk by Claire Rougeulle showed that X chromosome inactivation and dampening are regulated by the same molecular players during early development in females (9). Nicola Festuccia then highlighted the transcription factor Nr5a2 as a master regulator of gene expression coordinating proliferation and genome stability during preimplantation in mice (10). At the end of the talks, we were treated to a grand dinner at the Hogwarts-esque dining hall of Keble College. With our stomach content, we celebrated the success of some ace researchers. Jonathan Slack was awarded the Wolpert medal recognising his impact through public outreach and teaching especially as he has written multiple books for scientific and non-scientific audiences. The Waddington medal recipient, whose identity was kept top secret until the award, was Marysia Placzek. The medal symbolised her major contributions to developmental biology, which became apparent as she took us through her research journey. The thousands of embryos she has dissected throughout her career were enough grounds to earn her the medal although her research on understanding patterning of the vertebrate nervous system was probably what did the trick. Alongside her career trajectory, it was amazing to see how she balanced her family life, a quality I find inspiring being a woman in science. To top it all off, the evening ended with a Hollywood-style trailer of the upcoming BSDB film that collated the diverse scenes of developmental biology in the UK.

Episode 3

The morning of day three was designed around “Concepts and theories in developmental biology”. Inaugurating the session, Jeremy Green delved into the theories of pattern formation based on the “reaction-diffusion model” and “positional information” theory (11). He also proposed two new ideas – mechanics and an omics approach to morphogenesis – in symmetry breaking. In a related aspect, Berta Verd showed that mathematical models of pattern formation should implement cell movements that are ignored in such models. Her research has established, for the first time, a framework to reverse-engineer gene regulatory networks (GRNs) of pattern formation in tissues under robust morphogenetic cell rearrangements (12). I also listened to James DiFrisco discuss the conundrum of how generalised principles can be extracted from diverse biological systems and applied across phylogenies. He suggested that combining mathematical modelling and our knowledge of evolutionarily conserved mechanisms may help address such complexities. Finally, Ruth Baker demonstrated that calibrating a mathematical model to high throughput experimental data from scratch assays can be used to infer mechanistic details underlying wound closure (13). Fitting right in with the session’s theme, the Beddington medal was awarded to Rasa Elmentaite for her fantastic PhD thesis investigating human intestinal development using single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics (14, 15).

The afternoon was Barcelona’s moment in the sun (quite literally), similar to the format of day two. With quite a vast genre encompassing “Dynamics, mechanics and evolution”, this session was packed with interesting talks. Alejo Rodriguez-Fraticelli outlined how combining single-cell genomics and lineage tracing can be used to understand cellular heterogeneity and its consequences during development, ageing and cancer (16, 17). Yanlan Mao spoke about how tissues maintain their shape during repair and homeostasis. Focusing on wound closure in the Drosophila wing disc, she showed that tissue fluidity at the wound edge helps repair (18) with mechanical force-mediated cell shape changes contributing to the process. Next, Elvan Böke probed the question, “How do oocytes remain healthy for decades?” to which a part of the answer could be due to the ability of dormant oocytes to keep two detrimental factors in check – the production of reactive oxygen species (19) and the accumulation of protein aggregates in the cytosol. In his talk, Cristian Cañestro revealed how the tunicate, Oikopleura dioica, can be used to study gene loss and the deconstruction of GRNs to understand evolutionary diversity (20). Lastly, Antonio Scialdone showed that loser cells possessing mitochondrial defects tend to be eliminated in the mouse embryonic epiblast with cell competition selecting for optimal mitochondrial function before gastrulation (21). After a day of back-to-back talks, the evening was party time with the dinosaurs. Drinks in hand, we explored the quirky Pitts River Museum before ending up at the Museum of Natural History, our final stop for the night. With great food, drinks, music and dancing I unwinded in the revelry. If only the dinosaurs had come alive, it would have been a perfect re-enactment of Night at the Museum…

Season finale

After partying (and one too many drinks), it was nothing short of a miracle that I made it to the first talk the following morning. It was presented by Julien Leclercq who was also awarded the Thesis Prize from the French Society for Developmental Biology for his outstanding PhD research identifying the genetic mechanisms that regulate eye formation in different morphotypes of the fish Astyanax mexicanus (22). Julien’s presentation was followed by the final instalment of talks revolving around “Regeneration, Disease and Ageing”, where Mathilda Mommersteeg challenged the current notion that oxidative phosphorylation inhibits regeneration. She highlighted that oxidative phosphorylation is required for the re-differentiation of cardiomyocytes and the long-term regeneration of the zebrafish heart. Stephanie Ellis then focused on how cell competition maintains tissue structure during mouse skin development. She outlined two sequential mechanisms – (a) the elimination and engulfment of loser cells by winners and (b) the expulsion of losers from the basal layer by differentiation (23). In the penultimate talk of the conference, Daria Siekhaus demonstrated that BMP signalling specifies the fate of leader macrophages that then infiltrate the Drosophila embryo to regulate homeostasis. Lastly, the closing keynote was delivered by Angela Nieto who talked about different programmes of EMT concerning three scenarios – development, fibrosis, and cancer. She discussed the commonalities and differences between these EMT forms and how they can maintain or breach epithelial homeostasis.

After four days of excellent talks, fruitful discussions and making new science buddies, it was time to return to life as usual. While on my train to Manchester, I felt grateful to have attended the EDBC. It not only provided important feedback for my work but also instilled in me new ideas that I could explore. I learned about aspects of developmental biology that I wasn’t familiar with before, helping broaden my outlook on the field and making me realise the scale of the versatile things that are indeed possible. While writing this report, I eagerly look forward to the next one. Here’s to EDBC 2027!

References

1.            Chiaradia I, Imaz-Rosshandler I, Nilges BS, Boulanger J, Pellegrini L, Das R, et al. Tissue morphology influences the temporal program of human brain organoid development. Cell Stem Cell. 2023;30(10):1351-67.e10.

2.            Rayon T, Stamataki D, Perez-Carrasco R, Garcia-Perez L, Barrington C, Melchionda M, et al. Species-specific pace of development is associated with differences in protein stability. Science. 2020;369(6510).

3.            Dang Y, Lattner J, Lahola-Chomiak AA, Afonso DA, Taubenberger A, Ulbricht E, et al. Self-propagating wave drives noncanonical antidurotaxis of skull bones in vivo. bioRxiv. 2023:2023.07.10.547677.

4.            Roellig D, Theis S, Proag A, Allio G, Bénazéraf B, Gros J, Suzanne M. Force-generating apoptotic cells orchestrate avian neural tube bending. Dev Cell. 2022;57(6):707-18.e6.

5.            Gracia M, Theis S, Proag A, Gay G, Benassayag C, Suzanne M. Mechanical impact of epithelial-mesenchymal transition on epithelial morphogenesis in Drosophila. Nat Commun. 2019;10(1):2951.

6.            Pinheiro D, Kardos R, Hannezo É, Heisenberg C-P. Morphogen gradient orchestrates pattern-preserving tissue morphogenesis via motility-driven unjamming. Nature Physics. 2022;18(12):1482-93.

7.            Brunet T, Larson BT, Linden TA, Vermeij MJA, McDonald K, King N. Light-regulated collective contractility in a multicellular choanoflagellate. Science. 2019;366(6463):326-34.

8.            McDole K, Guignard L, Amat F, Berger A, Malandain G, Royer LA, et al. In Toto Imaging and Reconstruction of Post-Implantation Mouse Development at the Single-Cell Level. Cell. 2018;175(3):859-76.e33.

9.            Alfeghaly C, Castel G, Cazottes E, Moscatelli M, Moinard E, Casanova M, et al. XIST dampens X chromosome activity in a SPEN-dependent manner during early human development. bioRxiv. 2023:2023.10.19.563078.

10.          Festuccia N, Vandormael-Pournin S, Chervova A, Geiselman A, Langa-Vives F, Coux R-X, et al. Nr5a2 is essential for morula development. bioRxiv. 2023:2023.01.16.524255.

11.          Green JB, Sharpe J. Positional information and reaction-diffusion: two big ideas in developmental biology combine. Development. 2015;142(7):1203-11.

12.          Spiess K, Fulton T, Hwang S, Toh K, Saunders D, Paige B, et al. Approximated Gene Expression Trajectories (AGETs) for Gene Regulatory Network Inference on Cell Tracks. bioRxiv. 2022:2022.01.12.476060.

13.          Martina Perez S, Sailem H, Baker RE. Efficient Bayesian inference for mechanistic modelling with high-throughput data. PLoS Comput Biol. 2022;18(6):e1010191.

14.          Elmentaite R, Kumasaka N, Roberts K, Fleming A, Dann E, King HW, et al. Cells of the human intestinal tract mapped across space and time. Nature. 2021;597(7875):250-5.

15.          Elmentaite R, Ross ADB, Roberts K, James KR, Ortmann D, Gomes T, et al. Single-Cell Sequencing of Developing Human Gut Reveals Transcriptional Links to Childhood Crohn’s Disease. Dev Cell. 2020;55(6):771-83.e5.

16.          Rodriguez-Fraticelli AE, Wolock SL, Weinreb CS, Panero R, Patel SH, Jankovic M, et al. Clonal analysis of lineage fate in native haematopoiesis. Nature. 2018;553(7687):212-6.

17.          Weinreb C, Rodriguez-Fraticelli A, Camargo FD, Klein AM. Lineage tracing on transcriptional landscapes links state to fate during differentiation. Science. 2020;367(6479).

18.          Tetley RJ, Staddon MF, Heller D, Hoppe A, Banerjee S, Mao Y. Tissue Fluidity Promotes Epithelial Wound Healing. Nat Phys. 2019;15(11):1195-203.

19.          Rodríguez-Nuevo A, Torres-Sanchez A, Duran JM, De Guirior C, Martínez-Zamora MA, Böke E. Oocytes maintain ROS-free mitochondrial metabolism by suppressing complex I. Nature. 2022;607(7920):756-61.

20.          Ferrández-Roldán A, Fabregà-Torrus M, Sánchez-Serna G, Duran-Bello E, Joaquín-Lluís M, Bujosa P, et al. Cardiopharyngeal deconstruction and ancestral tunicate sessility. Nature. 2021;599(7885):431-5.

21.          Lima A, Lubatti G, Burgstaller J, Hu D, Green AP, Di Gregorio A, et al. Cell competition acts as a purifying selection to eliminate cells with mitochondrial defects during early mouse development. Nat Metab. 2021;3(8):1091-108.

22.          Leclercq J, Torres-Paz J, Policarpo M, Agnès F, Rétaux S. Evolution of the regulation of developmental gene expression in blind Mexican cavefish. bioRxiv. 2022:2022.07.12.499770.

23.          Ellis SJ, Gomez NC, Levorse J, Mertz AF, Ge Y, Fuchs E. Distinct modes of cell competition shape mammalian tissue morphogenesis. Nature. 2019;569(7757):497-502.

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By Tanya Foley

This year, the European Developmental Biology Congress experimented with an innovative conference format. A main meeting at Keble College in Oxford, UK, was complemented by two mini-hub meetings across continental Europe: one at Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, and the other at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) in Barcelona, Spain. This format, proposed by Sally Lowell and the British Society of Developmental Biology, was conceived to maintain the benefits of in-person scientific interaction, a valuable component of conference attendance, while decreasing the environmental impact and cost associated with travel.

As part of the Paris hub organizing team, alongside Sigolène Meilhac, Nicola Festuccia, Tom Cumming, and Guillaume Frasca, I was excited to be part of this ambitious project. The Paris hub hosted 68 participants from around the world, most of whom had travelled from either within France or continental Europe, thereby achieving the main goal of the meeting.

The morning of September 26 began with a Morphogenesis session shared between Paris and Oxford. This series of talks opened with Magali Suzanne from Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse. Magali spoke from Paris, sharing her work on mechanical forces exerted by apoptotic cells that contribute to tissue remodeling.

Following this, a series of fascinating talks seamlessly alternated between the Oxford and Paris locations. Those who spoke from Paris included Thibaut Brunet, who shared work from his lab at Institut Pasteur investigating the influence of environmental factors on multicellularity in choanoflagellates. He was joined by Adriano Bolondi from the Max Planck Institut for Molecular Genetics in Berlin who shared work from his PhD thesis exploring the mechanisms by which transient progenitors undergo coordinated changes during embryonic development, and by Amélie Elouin, a PhD student from École Polytechnique in Paris, who presented her work on non-cell autonomous functions of myosin in cell migration during gastrulation. The diversity of research topics and model organisms represented within this session, shared by speakers from all career stages, made for an exciting start to the integrated portion of the meeting.

After a poster session at the Paris hub, a second session on Gene Regulation was hosted exclusively from Paris and streamed in Oxford. During this session, we were delighted by talks covering diverse mechanisms of gene regulation in embryonic stem cells by both Claire Rougeulle, from Université Paris Cité, who shared work from her group on the role long noncoding RNAs in X chromosome inactivation in primates, and a talk by Nicola Festuccia who presented his work on the essential role of orphan nuclear receptors during the transition from genome activation to lineage specification. Postdoctoral fellow Cara Piciotto from Institut Pasteur shared work on the effect of cell-to-cell heterogeneity in binary fate decisions mediated by Notch signaling, and Robin Rondon, a PhD student at Institut Jacques Monod, spoke about the molecular mechanisms by which BMP signaling regulates patterning in the developing spinal cord.

During these integrated sessions, highly engaged participants asked many questions from both locations, with the interconnected format both promoting scientific curiosity and establishing a synergy between the two sites that was maintained throughout the week.

During the rest of the conference, sessions were streamed from both Oxford and Barcelona on campus in the Francois Jacob amphitheater, maintaining the community atmosphere that was initiated earlier in the week. Paris delegates listened to the talks from Oxford and Barcelona as a group, discussing new and exciting concepts over coffee during breaks between each session. The collaborative spirit of the conference became particularly strong on the afternoon of September 27, when the Barcelona hub had their shared session with Oxford and all three sites were connected online at once.

In addition to the shared program integrated with Oxford and Barcelona, the Paris site hosted a poster session and evening cocktail social to promote further interaction among those at the hub. During the social event, Liza Sarde and Nisha Veits were each awarded a poster prize, and travel grants were given to Zeinab AlKobra AlHajj Hassan, Charlene Guillot, Joseph Leger, Xiaohui Liu, and Marcia Peixoto who travelled to Paris for the meeting. Congratulations to the awardees, as well as everyone who participated for their impressive achievements!

On September 28, the final day of the meeting, the French Society of Developmental Biology (Société Française de Biologie du Développement) Thesis Prize lecture was given by Julian Leclercq from Institut des Neurosciences, Paris-Saclay, who shared his PhD work on the evolution of gene regulation in the Astyanax mexicanus embryo with those present both in Paris and Oxford. This was followed by a final series of talks on Regeneration, Disease, and Aging, streamed from Oxford for those in Paris. Closing words from Paul Martin, Sally Lowell, and Shankar Srinivas from the Oxford organizing team marked the end of this first experiment in sustainable conferencing, which was a great success!

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