The Anand lab is broadly interested in identifying and characterizing non-coding RNAs, especially microRNAs, in the regulation of developmental and pathological angiogenesis. Our work involves molecular biology techniques (Expression profiling, functional genomics, qPCR, cloning), cell biology (Confocal imaging, 3D cell culture, flow cytometry, bioluminescence assays) and uses in vitro, in vivo model systems. Our goal is to both understand the functional role of non-coding RNAs in the vasculature and seek ways to exploit these molecules for diagnostic and/or therapeutic purposes.

Qualifications         

Required:

• PhD, MD or MD/PhD in Molecular Biology/Cell Biology/Immunology or relevant areas.
• At least one first author paper in a good journal and not more than 2 years post PhD experience.
• Passion and high degree of enthusiasm for science.
• Good analytical skills.
• Ability to prioritize multiple tasks at one time.
• Must have excellent communication skills: both written and verbal.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.

Molecular biology techniques required: PCR, Real-time qPCR, cell culture, transfections, transductions, Western blots, cloning, confocal imaging.

Preferred:

Experience with murine models of angiogenesis.

Experience with gene expression screens/functional genomics.

Experience with synthetic biology tools is desirable.

Additional Details:             

OHSU is an equal opportunity, affirmative action institution. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability or protected veteran status. Applicants with disabilities can request reasonable accommodation by contacting the Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Department at 503-494-5148.

How to Apply:

Apply online for position number IRC 42766

http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/about/services/human-resources/careers/

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Marco Milán leads the Development and Growth Control Laboratory (Battista/Minocri, IRB Barcelona)

 The Phd student Lara Barrio worked on the role of p53 in metabolism (Battista/Minocri, IRB Barcelona)

Scientists at IRB Barcelona have observed that, when deprived of food, flies that do not express p53 show poor management of energy store.

The researchers provide new insights to study p53 function in metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.

 
Most scientific literature devoted to the protein p53 refers to cancer biology, and the functions of this molecule as a tumour suppressor have been described in detail. Furthermore, also in cancer biology, it is known that p53 inhibits the metabolic pathways of tumour cells in order to block their metabolism and prevent their rapid growth and proliferation.

The most innovative research on p53 attempts to unveil its functions in the management of energy stores and nutrients in healthy cells. Recent studies with cell cultures have demonstrated that p53 is activated in response to nutrient depletion. This observation thus opens up a promising field of research into the role of p53 in metabolism and cell health.

This is precisely the field tackled in a study performed by scientists headed by ICREA Research Professor Marco Milán, at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). In this work, published today in Cell Reports, the authors show that in the fly Drosophila melanogaster p53 is activated in certain cells to adapt the metabolic response to nutrient deprivation, thus having a global effect on the organism.

The researchers also reveal the molecular mechanisms through which the activity of p53 is regulated. The results obtained in Drosophila are useful to address the study of the molecular mechanisms of p53 in vertebrate models and to examine whether this protein is involved in diabetes and obesity.

Microscopy image showing cells of the fat body. In Drosophila the storage and management of energy is regulated by cells from this tissue (Lara Barrio, IRB Barcelona)

Drosophila as a model to study diabetes and obesity

In humans, nutrient management is organised by a coordinated system involving cells from adipose tissue and from organs such as the pancreas and liver. When we eat, a complex system is triggered in which the hormones insulin and glucagon are responsible for distributing nutrients among tissues and storing them for later use. In Drosophila the storage and management of energy is regulated by cells from a tissue known as the fat body.

“Through this study we demonstrate that Drosophila is useful to study the adaptive response of an organism to the presence or absence of food and to examine the systemic response. In addition, this model contributes to revealing the molecular mechanisms activated and that work in the same way in vertebrates,” explains Milán, head of the Development and Growth Control Lab at IRB. “In fact, we can now generate diabetic and obese flies to study these metabolic diseases at the molecular level.”

p53 allows energy use to be adjusted in order to optimise energy stores

The scientists studied the function of p53 in fasting flies in order to unveil the metabolic response of the organism. When no food is available, p53 is activated exclusively in cells of the fat body. The activity of this protein induces a change in the metabolism of these cells in such a way that they stop using glucose and make new nutrients to fuel the surrounding tissues.

“p53 acts as a sensor of the fat body of the fly. It makes cells “tighten their belts” in order to use energy stores prudently and makes them act unselfishly in order to ensure a supply to other cells,” describes Lara Barrio, first author of the article and a PhD student in Marco Milán’s lab. The key role of p53 in metabolism is reflected by the fact that flies in which p53 is inhibited die more quickly.

The team believes that this work with Drosophila will pave the way to more in-depth research into the biology and functions of p53 in metabolism and associated diseases. “It would be particularly interesting,” say the scientists, “to address vertebrates and analyse the participation of p53 in diabetes and obesity and the cardiovascular conditions associated with these metabolic disorders.”

Image of the fat body tissue. In red, structures responsible for storing lipids (Lara Barrio, IRB Barcelona)

Reference article:
MicroRNA-Mediated Regulation of Dp53 in the Drosophila Fat Body Contributes to Metabolic Adaptation to Nutrient Deprivation
Lara Barrio, Andrés Dekanty, and Marco Milán
Cell Reports (2014) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2014.06.020

This article was first published on the 24th of July 2014 in the news section of the IRB Barcelona website

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Turtles are strange organisms, and their development is wonderfully idiosyncratic. What other vertebrate alters its bone development to make an ossified mobile home? The turtle has perplexed biologists for many reasons. Where did turtles come from and to whom are they related? How did this different body plan arise developmentally and evolutionarily? The pieces of this puzzle are coming together with the help of technological advances that are revealing cryptic aspects about the development of these fascinating animals.

One can often recognize different species of turtles by the shape and pigmentation of their scutes (“Scutum” being the Latin word for shield), or modified scales, that cover the turtle shell in a tessellation. Scutes are interesting developmentally because they grow radially to cover the entire shell, and this growth must be coordinated with that of the underlying bones of the shell (though, the patterns of scutes and bones are different). Evolutionarily, scutes are interesting because few groups of turtles vary in the number of scutes on the carapace (dorsal part of the shell), and certain freshwater and marine taxa have lost these structures altogether.

Our Development paper ”The origin and loss of periodic patterning in the turtle shell” examines the development and variation (normal and abnormal) of turtle scute formation, integrating two areas of evolutionary developmental biology that are usually separated: The developmental origins of evolutionary novelty and the mechanisms of developmental constraints. To do this, we have combined several approaches, integrating techniques from developmental biology (in situ hybridization and organ culture), theoretical biology (computational modeling), evolutionary biology (comparative morphology and phylogeny), and physics (micro-computed tomography).

Have we mentioned that turtles are seasonal breeders? Much progress has been made in the application of molecular genetic technologies to non-model organisms; however, the reproductive ecology of animals such as turtles can make the investigation of their developmental dynamics an odyssey. Though our laboratories are located in Helsinki (Finland) and Pennsylvania, our eggs come from turtle farms in Louisiana. In one season, we discovered that an array of patterned placodes generates the scutes of the shell. The following summer, we added drugs to the culture media to look at candidate developmental signaling pathways, and found that the placodal pattern requires Shh, Bmp, and Fgf signaling to form properly. We also acquired specimens of a turtle species that has lost its scutes, and found that these placodes are absent from that turtle. During the “off-season,” we developed computational models of scute formation, and hypothesized how both natural and abnormal variation is generated in turtle scutes. Finally, last summer, we tested hypotheses generated by the model with the addition of protein-soaked beads to our cultures.

Such unbroken interlocking of shapes in a two-dimensional space is called tessellation, and one of the best-known artists whose work is linked to tessellation patterns is the Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher. The illustration for the cover of the journal pays homage to Escher, and was done by Roland Zimm, the researcher who did the majority of the mathematical modeling in this article. Taking advantage of the geometrical parallels in his art, he re-drew a famous drawing of Escher’s, Reptiles in a modified way to depict key elements of our experiments. He gave himself the challenge of visualizing a unification of development in vivo and in silico, by integrating computational simulations within an idealized life circle of “real” turtles. A second homage is given to Alan Turing, who was a pioneer both in the fields of the foundations of computers and natural pattern formation. Turing’s reaction-diffusion mechanism is central to our hypothesis of scute patterning. This integration of computational modeling, experimental evo-devo, and classical art emphasizes the importance of cohesive interdisciplinarity in life sciences.

(5 votes)

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Here are the highlights from the current issue of Development:

talpid²: a mystery finally solved

The chicken talpid² and talpid³ mutants display a range of developmental phenotypes including craniofacial and limb defects. Although links to the sonic hedgehog (SHH) pathway had been proposed, the molecular nature of these mutations remained unclear for many years. The talpid³ phenotype is known to be caused by mutation in a ciliary protein – consistent with the known function of the cilium in SHH signal transduction. Now (p.3003), Samantha Brugmann and colleagues turn their attention to talpid². Focusing on the craniofacial phenotype, they show that talpid2 mutants display loss of coupling between ligand expression levels and SHH pathway activity as well as increased levels of GLI3A – the activator form of one of the transcription factors that mediate SHH signalling. At a cellular level, cilia fail to form properly in the mutants. Using whole genome sequencing approaches, the authors identify lesions in the ciliary protein C2CD3 in talpid² mutants. Identification of the talpid² locus has been long awaited, and although there is still much to understand about how C2CD3 regulates cilia formation and function, and SHH signalling, these data provide an important step in this direction.

Starvation MESses up the egg

Organ growth and developmental progression must be coordinated with nutritional status. On p.3013, Stéphane Noselli and co-workers analyse the interplay between systemic nutrient status signalling via the insulin pathway and germline development in Drosophila. In the ovary, follicle cells undergo a mitotic-to-endocycle switch (MES) in their mode of division; this is regulated by Notch-mediated downregulation of the Cut transcription factor. The authors now show that this MES is nutrient dependent: in the ovaries of starved flies, egg chambers pause at the MES, with the Notch pathway active but Cut downregulation blocked. MES pausing is reversible; upon refeeding, egg chambers rapidly move into the endocycle phase. Furthermore, this paused state is regulated by insulin signalling. Insulin pathway mutants enter paused MES even under fed conditions, while activation of the pathway induces progression into endocycle in starved animals. Cross-talk between FoxO (a key transcription factor downstream of insulin signalling), Notch and Cut ensures the nutrient sensitivity and reversibility of the paused state. Thus, this work identifies a checkpoint in the egg chamber that ensures that development is coupled with nutrient availability.

A taste for something new

In the adult tongue, taste buds are located on taste papillae and are constantly renewed throughout life to maintain gustatory sensing. The sonic hedgehog (SHH) pathway has been shown to regulate taste bud formation in development, whereby SHH activity inhibits taste placode formation. Linda Barlow and colleagues now find (p.2993) that SHH has an apparently opposite activity in the adult mouse tongue, promoting the differentiation of taste cells. Remarkably, they find that the ectopic expression of SHH can induce taste bud formation in regions of the tongue outside taste papillae – where taste buds would never normally form. Moreover, these ectopic taste buds develop and are maintained in the absence of nerve innervation, as opposed to endogenous taste buds whose maintenance is strictly nerve dependent. The authors thus propose that SHH signalling can trigger the whole programme of taste bud development in the adult tongue, and suggest that one important role of taste bud innervation might be to induce SHH expression, which then supports taste cell differentiation and bud maintenance.

Cell heterogeneity and multilineage priming in the kidney

Single cell profiling technology now allows us to gain unprecedented insight into the complexities of gene expression within a developing tissue at the single cell level. Here (p. 3093), Steven Potter and colleagues provide a valuable resource comprising RNA-seq data on over 200 individual mouse kidney cells at three developmental stages. Two particularly notable findings point to a process of multilineage priming operating during the differentiation of kidney progenitors. First, the authors find that early progenitor cells may express markers of differentiated cells in an apparently stochastic manner. Second, in cells of the P4 renal vesicle, they observe expression of markers of multiple lineages in the same cell, implying that individual cells are capable of differentiating towards multiple fates, with markers of non-selected lineages being subsequently repressed as the cell differentiates. Such multilineage priming has been observed in other contexts, most notably the early embryo. Single cell expression analyses, such as that reported here, will allow us to more clearly understand the intricate interplay between gene activation and repression operating at the single cell level within a tissue to define cell fates.

PLUS…

The POU-er of gene nomenclature

POU5F1 (OCT4) is a key regulator of stem cell fate, with homologues present throughout vertebrates. Frankenberg, Brickman and colleagues clarify the relationship between these homologues, aiming to resolve the confusion over the identity of the zebrafish gene. See the Spotlight on p.2921

The dynamics of plant plasma membrane proteins

Plants are able to adjust their growth in response to environmental changes, and this depends in part on their ability to establish polar protein distributions. Luschnig and Vert discuss the mechanisms involved in this process, focusing on plasma membrane proteins such as PINs. See the Review on p.2924

Obituary: Julian Hart Lewis

Developmental biologist Julian Lewis sadly passed away last April. Paul Martin and David Ish-Horowicz look back on his life and work. Read on p.2919

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A postdoctoral position is available in the Division of Developmental Biology at The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh. We are recruiting a post-doctoral research fellow for a joint academic/industrial project to develop avian stem cells for genome biobanking. For more information visit:

https://www.vacancies.ed.ac.uk/

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As you probably know, The Company of Biologists (the not-for-profit publisher behind the Node and Development) funds a variety of meetings and conferences every year, and since 2010 that it also organises its own series of workshops. The workshops are generally interdisciplinary in nature, aiming to bring together researchers who do not necessarily meet otherwise. The scientific organisers put together the program, but with strong support from The Company of Biologists, who take care of all the logistics and funding. At two recent workshops with a developmental biology focus, we took the opportunity to interview organisers and attendees, and ask them about their experience and the science discussed at the meetings. These have now been added to our YouTube channel.

You can find out more information about The Company of Biologists workshops by following this link. If you think that your field could benefit of an interdisciplinary meeting then find out more about how you can propose your own workshop.

“Evolution of the Human Neocortex: How Unique Are We?”

Organised by Arnold Kriegstein (University of California, San Francisco). You can read more about this workshop on the Node (here and here) as well as a meeting review published in Development.

“Coordinating Cell Polarity”

Organised by David Strutt (University of Sheffield), Enrico Coen (John Innes Centre, Norwich) and Nick Monk (University of Sheffield). A meeting review on this workshop will be published in Development in the near future.
 
 

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“There is no such thing as a non-model organism”
R. Behringer

This bold statement was announced less than a week into our Embryology course and has left a lasting impression on lecturers and students alike. At first it seemed like a sympathetic statement to the extensive and diverse systems us students were arriving from… “yeah, your work is relevant, don’t worry, people care about sturgeon skeletal patterns.” But as the course has moved forward it’s become increasingly apparent that it’s not the system that’s relevant but rather what questions we now have the ability to answer in that system. Why is this? What has changed in the recent years or in particular this year? ..it’s kind of a one word answer – CRISPR/Cas9.

The CRISPR/Cas9 system has revolutionized the way we can now design experiments for any system for which we can obtain genomic or transcript sequence. Want to know how many functional neural crest genes amphioxus has? Just spend less than an hour designing and ordering a few guide RNA oligo templates. You can be injecting in a few days. Want to test the function of dorsalizing genes only in the neural lineage of Xenopus? Inject the guide RNAs into the corresponding blastomeres. Also think about all the cell-autonomous questions you could address with expressing CRISPR/Cas9 mosaically. For almost every lecture and sweat-box discussion we have had in the past weeks I think at least one of us has come up with a CRISPR/Cas9 answer to a pending question or hypothesis in organisms spanning the tree of life….also we’re embryologists, we really like designing experiments that involve injecting things.

It’s not just the CRISPR/Cas9 system that has changed the prospects of embryology and development biology this year; it’s also the cheap and plentiful influx of genome sequences of these ‘non-model’ organisms. The technology and financial feasibility of sequencing whole genomes and transcriptomes has broken down the barriers for the genome targeting possibilities of CRISPR/Cas9. These genomes are broadening our perspectives and giving researchers the ability to step away from the traditional model organisms, with all their caveats and developmental exceptions, and address broader questions about the evolution of developmental mechanisms used across whole genera or clades.

We have also heard some really inspiring possibilities and probably the future of developmental biology research labs using multiple organisms. Bronner and Wallingford really hammered home the idea that working on just one traditional organism is going to be real lame, real soon. I’m ok with that…if it doesn’t work on the first one, move on to the next right?

I’ll end this with some inspiring quotes and advice from some of our Embryology lecturers this year:

“Humbling, educational, awe-inspiring…spiritual….that’s what it’s like to look at the worm” –Dave Sherwood
“Just nurture them and let them grow and cherish them” –Athula Wikramanayake
“It worked because you didn’t know it wouldn’t” – Nipam Patel
“The only two things you need to make this work are spinning the tubes and FAITH” –Nipam Patel
“As you become embryologists, you are going to see a lot of beautiful things, but they may not all be essential.” – Geraldine Seydoux
“You have to just buy into the dream (CRISPR/Cas9)” –Richard Behringer
“BMP forever means you are a belly forever… which is not so exciting” –Brigitte Galliot
“Know your blastopore from a hole in the ground” –Ray Keller
“We’re all walking mutants in one form or another” –Paul Trainor
“Axolotologist” –Elke Ober
“You can even get natural Double D’s “- John Q Henry
“All you need is Wnt” –Mark Q Martindale

(3 votes)

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The moment I really got fascinated by biology was when, aged 16, I saw a water flea’s heart beating in a school lesson. Up until that point I liked the subject but had never been really excited. Labelling the parts of a flower or an eye was fine, but not thrilling!

I was discussing my experience with Daphnia with Isabel Torres, a like-minded post-doc in the same department, and we decided to establish an outreach project introducing the microscopic world to even younger children. The idea was to try to spark an interest in science that would persist for as a long as possible. It was an experiment; we did not know how much the children would take in or what they would like to see the most. We were very lucky to receive generous funding for educational microscopes and cameras from the Lister Institute and the MRC, who have supported primary research in my lab. We spent a fun few days trying different samples. One afternoon we had about a quarter of the LMB’s Cell Biology department along to marvel at Tetrahymena ingesting carmine particles!

Once reasonably confident in our “Microscopes4Schools” program we persuaded a local school to act as our guinea pigs. We found that the 10 and 11-year olds were thrilled by the microscopic world and were engaged by all the activities. With the help of many great volunteers from our institute, particularly Monica Brenni and Marwah Hassan, we’ve since run the workshop at several local schools, at three Cambridge Science Festivals and for hundreds of children at our institute’s open day.

The children use cheap, robust stereomicroscopes to identify mutant fruit flies and to match up samples (ladybirds, butterflies, seeds, flowers) with high magnification images that we provide. Activities with compound microscopes include looking at live Daphnia (!), Tetrahymena, Volvox and the children’s cheek cells.

We’ve learnt that it does not take a lot of money to run such an outreach activity. The stereomicroscopes cost approximately £40 (€50/$70) and the compound microscopes cost just under £200 (€250/$350), yet producing images of great quality (see diatom image below). Although we’ve typically taken several microscopes to schools I’ve recently run a scaled down version with a single educational compound scope and a CCTV camera, which I connected to a data projector. This was for five to seven year olds and they too were thrilled to see the samples.

Another successful initiative has been to lend a user-friendly digital microscope to local schools for two weeks so that they can take images of samples collected by the children. This has evolved into a “Science Image Award” (an example of an entry is shown below) with the best image winning an educational microscope, which is generously provided by a sponsor. This activity brings the children in contact with the natural world, which does not happen regularly for many of them.

We put together our experiences in a website, www.microscopes4schools.co.uk, which includes advice on sourcing suitable microscopes and supplies, as well as suggestions for experiments. Judging by Google Analytics this site has had a far-reaching impact (67,000 visitors from 186 countries in the two years it has been active).

As many of us engaged in outreach will attest, the whole process is a lot of fun and highly rewarding. Seeing children enthused by science is a great joy. Plus I still get to marvel at all kinds of things down the microscope, which is what got me into this game in the first place!

Simon Bullock

The “Stereomicroscope Challenge” in the classroom

Entry for Science Image Award: Dragonfly pupal case

Image of diatom from £200 educational microscope

This post is part of a series on science outreach. You can read the introduction to the series here and read other posts in this series here.

(1 votes)

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The Node’s next stop is the capital of Austria- Vienna! Our visit will be in two parts:

Cat, the Node community manager, will be giving a talk at the Vienna Biocenter Campus entitled ‘Joining the online conversation: how to use social media to communicate your science’. This will be an informal talk and Q&A which will discuss how scientists can use social media, especially Twitter and blogging, to share the word about their research and advance their career. The talk will take place at the IMP Lecture Hall, Institute of Molecular Pathology, and is open to everyone! Join us on Tuesday the 22nd of July at 12h30.

Cat will also be attending the 5th meeting of the European Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology, which will take place from the 22nd to the 25th of July at the Campus of the University of Vienna. She will be around for the whole meeting, and would love to meet you and hear your thoughts on the Node! Drop the Node an email or say hello to Cat if you see her. The Node will also be tweeting  from the meeting.

We look forward to meeting you in Vienna!

(1 votes)

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By Henrique Marques-Souza and Rodrigo Nunes da Fonseca

Widely known as the country of soccer, samba and beautiful beaches, one might wonder if it is possible to perform high quality research in Developmental Biology in Brazil with so many distractions. What are the pros and cons of doing research in this area in Brazil?  Is there any tradition? How is the actual funding situation and scientific environment? How many research groups research Developmental Biology and what are the future perspectives?

2014 is a special year for Brazil not only because of the World Cup but also because of the 150 years of the publication of the book of the great German Naturalist Fritz Mueller Fur Darwin (1864), which has beautifully described Brazilian Crustacean Development and its evolutionary relationships providing an astonishing support to Darwin’s theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection. Interestingly, Fritz Muller´s descriptions were done at home with the help of a simple microscope, since no universities were present at that time in Brazil.

Many years have passed since Mueller´s discoveries and it is reasonable to say that the field of Developmental Biology remained for a long time dormant in Brazil, even during the revolution that happened in Germany and in the US with the rise of Drosophila developmental genetics in the 80´s. Many laboratories in Europe and in the US have set the ground state of Evolutionary and Developmental Biology, as it was only in the late 90’s that Brazilian researches, that had joined these pioneer laboratories as postdoctoral fellows, started to change this situation by returning to establish their labs in Brazil. In 2001, these researchers joined efforts to organize the First International Symposium of Developmental Biology in the city of Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, with several renowned speakers from Europe and US joining in. This meeting represented the first countrywide contact between researchers and was vital to attract many young students to the developmental biology field, including one of the authors of this post. In parallel, the Unesco Chair of Developmental Biology, led by Nicole Le Douarin, (http://www.anato.ufrj.br/catedraunesco2008/en/unesco.htmBrazilian) has organized and supported several practical courses in Developmental Biology since 1999, especially in less developed states in Brazil. Today, laboratories in different Universities, all over the country, are specifically dedicated to Developmental Biology, with a young and active research community that provides the field with a interactive network of peers and laboratories, allowing for critical discussions and exchange of students and techniques between labs. As a consequence, Brazilian researchers are a significant part of the Latin American Society of Developmental Biology (http://lasdbbiology.ning.com/), having today the Brazilian Developmental Biologist José Xavier-Neto as the president.

What about funding? Over the past years Brazil’s investments in science and technology has significantly increase. While federal funding agencies are the lonely responsible for the funding for most Brazilian states, the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, have their own funding agencies. Due to the higher state income taxes, these states have a much higher funding availability than the remaining regions of the Country. As a consequence, most research groups are located in these three states in Southeastern of Brazil. Only in 2013, the São Paulo funding agency (FAPESP) invested over US$511 million in funding awarded to research projects (http://www.scidev.net/global/funding/feature/funding-brazil-s-science-sao-paulo-s-success-story-1.html). With good scientists and funding available, is there any limitation to Brazil’s advance in Developmental Biology?

 Participants of the last International Symposium on Developmental Biology, held in the charming coast city of Paraty, in November of 2013.

Here we highlight three issues that we consider some of the most important. First, the scientific community in Brazil studying Developmental Biology, although in the rise, is still very small, with national meetings hosting not more then 200 participants countrywide. This fact has a direct impact on the influence that this community could have scientifically and politically in the country and worldwide. Second, Brazil has one of the largest taxes and bureaucracies for imported goods. Antibodies, enzymes, primers, cell lines, media, genetically modified animals, and everything else related to research that comes from abroad has its price tripled due to taxes bureaucracy. Also, since we depend on importing most of our reagents and equipment, the experiments and lab stocks have to be tightly programed to avoid having to freeze research while reagents are being shipped. Third, science has the great advance of being fluent, stateless and worldwide. Today, through science, anyone can study anywhere at any time. In Brazil, the program Ciênicas sem Fronteiras has allowed Brazilian undergraduate and graduate students to spend time studying and doing research abroad. Also, the state funding agencies and graduate programs finance and stimulate students to perform part of their research abroad. This great advance of the fluency of science is still not that advantageous to Brazil. On can image that the best students are being recruited to the best universities and research institute all over the world. One day Brazil will for sure be also attractive for science, but until then, the brain evasion has being affecting us, especially in basic research such as Development Biology. As everywhere, the more impact our research make in the scientific community, more attractive it will be, not only for Brazilians abroad, but also for every scientist interested in competitive research. Great times are coming!

A recent wave of ‘comebacks’ happened in the past few years, with young scientists that did their PhD and postdoctoral training in the US and Germany returning and establishing research groups in different states of Brazil. These research groups are very well funded, creating solid networks of interaction among then and with research groups abroad, and hunger to help the pioneers to take Brazil’s Developmental Biology research to impact the world with original and cutting edge science!

If you are interested, we welcome you into this fascinating journey….

Rodrigo Nunes da Fonseca is a Professor at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, in Macaé, in Rio de Janeiro State, and Henrique Marques-Souza is a Professor at University of Campinas, in São Paulo State.

(3 votes)

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