I would like to express my gratitude for the travel fellowship I was awarded this year for a visit to a laboratory in Helsinki University. During my trip to Yka Heliarutta’s lab in Helsinki, I learned three new histological techniques: plastic embedding of plant root tissue followed by cross-sectioning, in situ hybridization with such tissue and sectioning of samples stained for assays of gene reporter expression. I now have the confidence to practice these techniques in Cardiff where I am researching in developmental genetics in plants for my PhD, and I already have several experiments lined up that will utilize them. I also have some exciting results from the experiments I used to practice these techniques in Helsinki. We detected a new subtle phenotype in a cell cycle mutant that doesn’t have any general growth defects, as far as we can tell. These direct benefits of visiting the lab were accompanied by other benefits, such as networking with other plant scientists carrying out research within the institute I was based in. Members of the team I worked with were very familiar with plant vascular development; I learned a lot from them and had some stimulating conversations. I also set up a new collaboration with a different lab, which will hopefully allow me to address some questions I’ve been asking for some time. The lab focuses on secondary growth in plants, one area of the research I am carrying out for my PhD, so I am likely to get good advice on the conclusions I can draw on results I obtain, and what experiments I should perform next. The trip has also allowed us here in Cardiff to finalize a manuscript we have been preparing for several months now. We hope to submit this to the journal Current Biology in October.

(1 votes)

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The last two days of the EMBO meeting were quite busy, with lots of interesting plenary talks, concurrent sessions, and special symposia.

On Monday evening two interesting non-biology talks were happening at the same time: one about Women in Science, and one about Science Policy & Publishing. I attended the Women in Science talk.

The Women in Science talk was given by Brian Nosek – an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. He studies stereotypes and social judgment, and he let the audience take part in some common tests to identify gender bias. Even though the audience (of predominantly female scientists) knew what they were being tested on, the bias was still apparent when it came to quickly assigning groups of words to work, family, male or female. It’s a bit difficult to explain the test, but you can see it in this video (starting at the 1:17 minute mark) and similar tests are also on Nosek’s site Project Impact.

If the prejudice that “science is for men” is so engrained, as Nosek showed with examples from several studies, is there anything that can be done to change it? The prejudice comes from two sides: those making decisions (e.g. hiring people in academic positions), and those on the receiving end of the prejudice. For the first group, education, blinding (selecting interview candidates from CV’s without names) and comparative assessment were all listed as ways to combat prejudice. For the second group – women themselves – Nosek suggested: role models, confidence building, and removing identity threats. He gave a great example of how confidence building helped female college students perform better on science tests.

Of course there were also many talks about biology these last few days. Linda Partridge’s Monday morning lecture on the effect of diet on lifespan had several people regret their large servings of French cheese the evening before. I interviewed her later in the day, so will summarize that in a separate post.

It was once again difficult to choose between concurrent sessions these last two days, but I settled on “Genes to Shape”, “Genetic Diversity” and “Animal Germline”. I won’t be able to cover all those talks, but here are a few of the talks that Node readers might be interested in:

Enrico Coen talked about cell polarity in the “Genes to Shape” session. He compared cells to people waiting in a queue at an airport gate. (I took a similar picture of people waiting to board the plane to Nice from Heathrow – see left). These people are all facing the same direction, determined by the location of the gate and airplane, but they’re already polarized (with a front and back) before they join the queue. Likewise, Coen suggested, cells can be polarized before they group together, and cell-cell interaction or signals just coordinate (not cause) the polarisation. He showed a few simulations that demonstrated that such behaviour could then shape a leaf in plants. In the same session, Floris Bosveld showed how detailed image analysis of fly embryos revealed how the Fat/Dachsous/Four-jointed PCP pathway mechanically controls morphogenesis and Markus Affolter demonstrated how blood vessels are formed from unicellular tubes through cell rearrangement.

The germline session on the last day of the meeting was very interesting. Ruth Lehmann, who was chairing this session, used her talk to outline the three main threats to the germline (somatic differentiation, transposable elements, and pathogens) and how germ cells are protected from them. Saadi Kochbin talked about epigenetic guidance of male genome programming. Specifically, he showed how the bromodomain-dependent factor Brdt drives meiosis and haploid cell differentiation.
Some other talks in this session were about unpublished research that I can’t mention yet, but keep an eye out for Mitinori Saitou’s upcoming Science paper – it will be out soon!

The meeting closed with a plenary session on “oxygen sensing, vasculogenesis, and disease”. I noticed that all three speakers in this session – Peter Carmeliet, Anne Eichmann, and Kari Alitalo – who each covered one of the three main topics in the session, had either collaborated with, or directly worked with each other at some point. I suppose that shows that the field of vascular research is as interconnected as the vascular system itself.

All in all, this was an interesting and very varied conference. It was impossible to be at all the talks I wanted to be, but the organisers had done a great job at planning the sessions. Thanks to everyone who dropped by the Company of Biologists stand (and to the people at the career table for promoting my Leaving the Lab article!)

(2 votes)

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We recently learned that Mike Gaze passed away last month. In addition to running a research group working on the development of the visual system in Xenopus and heading up the NIMR‘s Division of Developmental Biology for many years, Mike was Editor of The Journal of Embryology and Experimental Morphology in the ’70s and ’80s, and was deeply involved in re-branding and re-launching JEEM as Development in 1987. He retired from Development the following year, but his support of the journal in its early years is still remembered and appreciated by all at the Company of Biologists.

For a summary of Mike’s life and work, please see this article by Frank Norman at the NIMR.

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September is “back to school”-month in a lot of countries, and “back to the lab” for those lucky few who had time off. We saw this reflected on the Node with a lot of varied content and several job postings. Here’s a summary.

EMBO meeting
The annual EMBO meeting took place in Nice from September 22-25, and Eva was attending the meeting as official conference blogger. Several of her posts are still to come – including interviews with speakers – but you can see them all under the “EMBO” tag on the Node. Aside from writing summaries of conference talks, Eva had a chance to ask some of the plenary speakers for presentation tips.

“All three of them gave the same two basic tips:
1. Spend time preparing your slides. Don’t put too much information on them.
2. Always keep your audience in mind. They don’t know as much about your field as you do.
What they did not agree on was whether or not you should practise your talk.”

Node readers can share their views on practising talks in the poll in the post. Most of you do diligently practise your presentations!

Speaking of conferences: don’t forget to add upcoming conferences to our calendar! You will need an active Node account to do so, and you can register here.

Research – the Tamura lab’s earthquake experience
This summer, Tohru Yano, from Koji Tamura’s lab, published a paper on zebrafish fin development, but he had to overcome a few unusual obstacles to finish the work: Their lab was damaged in the 2011 earthquake in Japan, destroying some equipment, and leaving the fish without easy access to fresh water. Read his post about what happened behind the scenes.

“When our water tank for fish became depleted of water after two weeks, we filtered water from a well at a place far from our fish room (the only place to obtain water in the campus) and we carried heavy plastic containers filled with water to the fish room. We were able to keep all of the fish lines alive (I had maintained the fish lines with tender care for six years from when I was an undergraduate student without the assistance of any fish technicians).”

“(…) We returned the fluorescence microscopes and DNA sequence analyzer back to their original positions, but they all fell onto the floor again when a big aftershock occurred.”

Luckily, they had help from several organisations to get them back on track within just a few months.

Images
The Glasgow Science Centre is looking for images depicting early embryogenesis in various organisms. If you have some, get in touch with them, and your images might end up in a museum exhibit!

Rachael highlighted the developmental biology images amongst this year’s Wellcome Image Award winners. Both images were taken by Vincent Pasque.

Finally, Node users voted for another Development cover from four images taken by Woods Hole Embryology course students. This was the last batch from the 2011 students, but the 2012 students took some great images as well, and we’ll have those on the site later.

Also on the Node:
–Several new job ads
–Stem cell map of Europe
–Update on Node tech updates

(3 votes)

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International Stem Cell Awareness Day is October 3, 2012, so on this day please help spread the word about the importance of stem cell research!   For more information on this day (and free wallpapers and downloadable stem cell images), visit StemCellsOfferHope.com, which is affiliated with the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine.  In celebration of this day, I just created a post on my blog at AllThingsStemCell that includes a summary of stem cell history and recent research breakthroughs and highlights.

(2 votes)

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At the EMBO meeting earlier this week, I had the opportunity to ask a few of the plenary speakers how they prepared for their talks. These speakers all had clear presentations that were easy to follow, even if you didn’t know much about the background of their field. It turns out that that was no coincidence: they consciously designed their talks that way.

I asked Ingrid Grummt, Jiří Friml, and Linda Partridge how they prepared for their talks, and if they had any tips for people who are due to give a conference presentation.

All three of them gave the same two basic tips:

1. Spend time preparing your slides. Don’t put too much information on them.
2. Always keep your audience in mind. They don’t know as much about your field as you do.

What they did not agree on was whether or not you should practise your talk. Linda Partridge is a proponent of practising, while Ingrid Grummt said she doesn’t practise her presentations. It comes down to your personal preference. Do you practise?

Friml said that he also considered his slot in the day’s conference programme. As EMBO Gold Medal winner, he was scheduled as the last speaker before dinner, so he tried to make his talk entertaining at points. One memorable quote from his lecture: “Plants also undergo embryogenesis. Keep that in mind next time you’re eating peanuts, please.”

Finally, the EMBO Meeting YouTube channel also has a video with useful presentation tips from Jon Copley. You’ll notice a lot of overlap with the advice collected above:

With these tips, your next talk is going to be amazing!

(Full interviews with Jiří Friml and Linda Partridge will appear on the Node later, as well as a summary of the last few days of the meeting.)

(3 votes)

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It was a close race at times, but the bat embryo was able to maintain its lead to become the winner of the latest Woods Hole image competition. This bat will appear on the cover of Development soon:

The image shows an Alcian blue staining of a Stage 17 bat (Carollia perspicillata) embryo, and was taken by Lingyu Wang and Ketty Lee. Congratulations!

In second place is a skeletal preparation of red-eared slider (turtle) by Megan Martik, Jane Yu, John Young, and Eric Brooks. The mouse embryo staining by Juliette Petersen and Rachel K. Miller came in third, followed by the 3D reconstruction of zebrafish embryo head vascularisation by Meghan Morrissey and Lynn Kee.

These were the last images from the 2011 course, but the students who took the course this past summer have also produced some stunning images, which will be vying for a cover spot later.

(4 votes)

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I am looking for an enthusiastic postdoc to work in my lab on stem cell biology in the cnidarian Hydractinia. The person should have a strong background in developmental biology, cell/molecular biology or in a related area. The position will be available in January 2013, initially for two years but can be extended by additional two years. For further details contact me at uri.frank@nuigalway.ie and have a look at our website www.nuigalway.ie/frank

Uri Frank

School of Natural Sciences

Regenerative Medicine Institute

National University of Ireland, Galway

Galway, Ireland

(2 votes)

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EuroStemCell is an EC-funded project that aims to help European citizens make sense of stem cells, by providing reliable, independent information and road-tested educational resources on stem cells and their impact on society.

We’ve recently launched an interactive stem cell map of Europe – featuring stem cell news, events, regulations, research centres and more. Take a look, have a play, and let us know what you think. And if you would like a guided tour, social scientist Emma King will be exploring the map this week, and posting some of her highlights on Twitter.

One aim of the map is to build up a picture of stem cell research in Europe, and we’d like your help to fill in some of the blanks. We have published summaries of how stem cell research is regulated in 15 European countries so far, and we would now like to extend this information with some personal stories by researchers working in the field.

Would you like to appear on the map, and write for us about your work with stem cells? We’re interested in exploring questions like:

* Where do the cells you work with come from?
* How do you get permission to use them?
* What guidelines do you have to follow?
* How do cell lines move between labs and around Europe?

Interested? Contact Kate or Emma to find out more about what’s involved, or for inspiration, take a look at blogs other researchers have written for us: Beate Roese-Korner’s blog; Anestis Tsakiridis’ blog; Selina Wray’s blog.

(1 votes)

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Biology is studied at different levels of size: molecules, cells, organisms, and entire ecosystems. The second day of the EMBO meeting covered all of these.

The plenary opening session on RNA covered the molecular. David Tollervey and Elisa Izaurralde described biochemical processes in RNA processing and post-transcriptional regulation, and Rob Singer showed techniques to follow single mRNA molecules through their lifetime.

In the breakout session on cell competition, several speakers described the processes by which neighbouring cells communicate with each other and decide who survives and who dies. Laura Johnston focussed on homeostatic signalling pathways that determine cell competition, and how this affects organ growth. What happens to the cells that lose the cell competition? Jean-Paul Vincent showed how dying cells in the developing fly wing are delaminated (excluded from the epithelium). And what do the winner cells do? According to Eduardo Moreno, winner cells kill loser cells, but then “leave the corpses”: other cells are in charge of removing the loser cells. More about this interesting breakout session can be found in Ben Short’s account on the JCB blog.

In the afternoon I attended the optogenetics session, to learn a bit about this technique. Optogenetics is a way to use lightresponsive receptors and guided light stimulation to induce cell behaviour in living organisms. For example, Herwig Baier used the technique to monitor eye movements and prey capturing behaviour in zebrafish embryos.

This year’s special lecture was given by Eric Karsenti, and covered biology at the ecosystem scale. Karsenti integrated the microscopic with the macroscopic in his talk: He described circulation and currents in the oceans, considering the planet as a whole, but dove into the molecular detail of the world’s oceans when he talked about the data that his TARA OCEANS project collected. The TARA project involved sailing around the world along a preplanned route that would cover as many different ecosystems as possible, and collecting not just biological samples, but also measuring oceanographic data along the way. The voyage involved two hundred people from 35 countries, who collected 27,000 biological samples at 153 measuring stations. The numbers of samples and the amount of data collected is absolutely staggering, and you can find out more on the TARA OCEANS website. I really enjoyed seeing some of the videos that Karsenti showed at the end of his talk: everywhere the boat moored, local school kids got a chance to visit the ship, and everyone on board – from sailing staff to scientists – was able to educate visitors about the project.

Following Karsenti was EMBO Gold Medal winner Jiří Friml, but I’ll leave that for a separate post, as I also had a chance to interview him separately for the Node.

In the evening I attended the PhD Meets Postdoc party, despite being neither a PhD student nor a postdoc. It was great to meet so many people there from labs around the world: Not quite as much variation as Karsenti found in the oceans, but it was close!

(3 votes)

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