I don’t even know where the last 72 hours went. Well, in fact I do. And it wasn’t spent sleeping. Since I now have 2 groups of people collecting for me, that means twice the amount of work. The Kazakhs live about an hour away, so they prefer to bring the animals to me when they finish collecting which has routinely been somewhere around 2 or 2:30 am. Since I would like the embryos to be as young as possible, and I expect the Chinese collectors to arrive each morning with their bounty, that means the best approach is to just go ahead and power through all of the dissections in the middle of the night which has put me in bed somewhere between 4:30 and 5 am each day lately. Then by 8:30 or 9 am I have been woken up by *rap rap* two second pause *rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap* until I go scowling and growling to the door to greet the woman of the couple in charge of the Chinese jerboa collective. Each morning I demonstrate that it takes no more than one polite knock to get my attention, but she cheerfully squawks on and on about how I need to be up because it’s light out and I’m missing breakfast. This is what’s understood from my limited understanding of Chinese and a lot of hand gestures. So then I crawl out of my jammies and into my clothes and out the door to settle the payment and dissect the next batch of animals. I’m functioning on very little sleep and showering only once in 2-3 days. And that’s my day sung in a round.

This particular morning was extremely tough. The Chinese folks brought me 45 females which is unbelievable. Except that I was feeling of their bellies as I sorted them, and I set aside 19 as too pregnant to be useful for me. I really want embryos from the first half of gestation and have a HUGE box back home of older embryos from previous collections that have hardly been touched. Plus, the whole reason I was excited about hiring this Chinese couple and had arranged a generous and motivating pay structure is because just 4 days ago they brought me animals that were either not pregnant or had very young embryos. Since then, they’ve been moving around to locations with more animals so they can make more money, but the problem is that animals in areas with a high local population also had a higher chance of encountering a mate soon after coming out of hibernation and therefore bred quickly. I was looking back on my notes from 3 years ago, and the pregnancy rate was closer to 60% with a majority of embryos at mid gestation as of about April 20th. The climate this year is very similar to that year, but this year I have a pregnancy rate near 95% and a much more advanced stages of development at this time on the calendar. So I think there’s been a recent population boom that’s affecting my numbers. In summary, field work in developmental biology is really hard.

So I wasn’t very happy about the fact that half of the animals I’m paying for are useless to me, so we discussed in more details what my research needs are and what I’m looking for in the animals. I explained how to tell when the females are really too pregnant and asked them to try to find areas with a lower population so they’d be more useful to me. I know it sounds like I’m asking them to make their work more difficult, but I explained that if they keep bringing me animals with old embryos, I won’t have a need to hire them anymore. The husband seemed to really understand and was patiently listening and wanting to learn more so they could bring me what I need. He seems to have a good business mind. His wife, on the other hand, went ballistic that I was changing the terms on her since all she seems to see are the finances. She’s always the one to take and count the money and has previously been the negotiator while her husband quietly stood by. Where it got really awkward was when the man got angry that she was interrupting, getting greedy, and didn’t seem to understand that they needed to be flexible to keep my business. After her persistent arguing, he lost patience and got really physical with her. He kept shoving her out the door, yelling at her, and seemed to really want to hit her. I was extremely uncomfortable and so far out of my cultural comfort zone. So I was grateful when the man and I came to a professional understanding we could agree upon and settled on a new pay structure that still fairly compensates them while adjusting for my needs. In truth, they’re making between 1000-2000 RMB per day split among 8 people in a place where the average day of wages is only about 100 RMB (equivalent to about $15), so I’m already paying better than the going labor rate.

The good thing is that as awkward and painful as negotiations in China can be, once a deal is made it’s amazing to see how quickly a person’s whole persona will change. I’ve seen this especially in the woman before when she’s been the one negotiating with me. They all have the most pained expression and loudly beg and plead and complain that it’s so hard and I’m so cheap, and surely I can afford to pay more. But then as soon as a deal is made, they are all cheerful and friendly. We ran into the woman again this afternoon in the market, and I was nervous about seeing her after the difficulty of the morning. She was talking to some friends when we walked up, and Sarah wanted to say hello and delicately express our concern for her. She didn’t come right out as say “I’m sorry your husband is an ahole” so as not to embarrass her in front of her friends, but she said “we were concerned for you”, and the woman stopped us from saying more. She seemed really touched and said don’t worry, that’s not our problem. She said she can tell we are good people, and she is happy doing business with us. She kept grasping my hands and even let Sarah give her a hug. So I think all is well in terms of our relationship. And given the spunk and vigor of this small but fiery woman, I have a feeling she holds her own with her husband as well and it was just a case of him needing to be in charge of the situation. I hope so at least.

(3 votes)

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We depend on our own comfort zones to keep us grounded, and stem cells are no different.  A recent paper in Development describes how the adhesion that keeps a stem cell in its niche is regulated.

A stem cell’s niche is important in maintaining its long-term undifferentiated state.  A great model of stem cell niche biology is the Drosophila testes, in which germline stem cells (GSCs) reside next to somatic hub cells within their niche.  GSCs maintain proximity to the “hub” through the use of E-cadherin-based adherens junctions.  A recent paper identifies a new player in adhesion of GSCs to the hub.  Srinivasan and colleagues found that the receptor tyrosine phosphatase Lar (Leukocyte-antigen-related-like) promotes GSC-hub adhesion through E-cadherin.  Lar, typically associated with axonal migration and synapse formation, is also required for proper localization of Apc2 and E-cadherin localization, in turn regulating centrosome positioning and asymmetric division.  Without Lar, fewer GSCs were found at the hub.  Images above show localization of Lar (red in merged, white in right image) at the GSC-hub interface (arrowheads) in Drosophila testes (early germ cells are green).  Lar is also seen between sister cells of early spermatogonial cysts (arrows), which have the ability to later replace lost GSCs.

For a more general description of this image, see my imaging blog within EuroStemCell, the European stem cell portal.

Srinivasan, S., Mahowald, A., & Fuller, M. (2012). The receptor tyrosine phosphatase Lar regulates adhesion between Drosophila male germline stem cells and the niche Development, 139 (8), 1381-1390 DOI: 10.1242/dev.070052

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It’s been a crazy few months of travel for me, with conferences so far in Slovenia, Barcelona and Colorado. But while Coventry may not match these destinations for exoticism or glamour, I’m really looking forward to the upcoming BSDB meeting, starting on Sunday at Warwick University. It’s got a fantastic line-up of speakers, and it’ll be great to get the chance to catch up with much of the local developmental biology community. The Company of Biologists will have a stand there, so if you’re coming too, please drop by and say hi. I’ll be there over lunchtime on Tuesday, as will the Editors in Chief of Journal of Cell Science and Biology Open: Michael Way and Jordan Raff. You’ll also see Eva (the face behind the Node) at the end of the Graduate Symposium session on Tuesday, and I’m sure we’ll both be hanging around the coffee urns during the breaks and the bar in the evening!

For those of you who won’t be there, the Node will – as in previous years – be bringing you reports from the meeting, so you can join us virtually (albeit retrospectively) for what promises to be an exciting and stimulating conference.

(3 votes)

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Last year you selected four covers for Development from images taken by students of the 2010 Woods Hole Embryology Course. These were the four winners:

The students of the 2011 course took some stunning images as well. (See also this report from the class). We’re asking you once again to help us select a cover image. This is the first round of four images. Which of these skeleton preparations would you like to see on the cover of Development? Please vote in the poll below the images. (Click any image to see a larger version.) You can vote until April 30, 12:00 (noon) GMT.

1. Veiled Chameleon (Chamaeleo calyptratus). This image was taken by Jake Hines (University of Colorado – Denver) and Nate Peters (University of Washington).

2. Skate (Raja). This image was taken by David Gold (University of California, Los Angeles), Lynn Kee (University of Michigan), and Meghan Morrissey (Duke University).

3. Mouse (Mus musculus). This image was taken by Samantha Jones (course assistant).

4. Corn Snake (Pantherophis guttatus). This image was taken by Jake Hines (University of Colorado – Denver) and Nate Peters (University of Washington).

(4 votes)

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A postdoctoral position studying skeletal development is available in the laboratory of Dr. Amy Merrill at the University of Southern California’s Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology (CCMB).  CCMB offers a highly supportive and interactive environment with a strong research profile in craniofacial development and repair.  Work conducted in the Merrill laboratory integrates human genetics and developmental biology to study normal and abnormal craniofacial development.  We are looking for an enthusiastic candidate who will carry out an independent research project aimed at understanding spatiotemporal signals that pattern bone and cartilage.  Ideal applicants will be highly motivated and have recently completed doctoral training in Developmental Biology.  

Please provide a cover letter, CV, and contact information for three references by email to: amerrill@usc.edu

(1 votes)

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The UK national Xenopus conference is an annual event held to discuss the exciting and extremely varied work carried out across the UK using the African clawed frog (Xenopus) as the model organism of choice. The event provides opportunity for PhD students and Postdocs from Xenopus labs round the UK to present their data to experts within the Xenopus community, a community which can easily be described as passionate and welcoming to all new members. This year’s meeting was held on the 19^th of March at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Cambridge, UK). This institute, opened in 1992, is famous for its substantial participation in the sequencing of the human genome. As a single institute it alone contributed the most sequencing data for what is now considered the gold standard human genome sequence. The meeting was held in a conference room lined with stands for some of the many sponsors of the event. These included companies such as sequencing giants Illumina, morpholino pioneers Gene Tools and many others including Techniplast, Sigma-Aldrich, Agilent Technologies, Biostatus and Cellectis Bioresearch.

The talks kicked off with a welcome from Derek Stemple, a senior investigator at the Sanger Institute who is currently using Zebrafish and Xenopus tropicalis as human disease models as well as being involved in the Zebrafish genome sequencing project. His welcome outlined the history of the Sanger Institute and gave a strong message of the importance it has played in revolutionising genome sequencing over the last 20 years and its continuing research into genomics and human disease models. This posed as a great introduction for the first talk by Amanda Hall who is currently working on the Xenopus tropicalis mutation resource project at the Sanger Institute. This project aims to create Xenopus knockouts which can be used to study various disease models. Invitro sperm ENU mutagenesis has been used to generate 6000 F2 mutant individuals the progeny of which can be maintained as genomic DNA libraries and frozen sperm for verification once positive phenotypic analysis is carried out on an F3 carrier population. The genomic library will undergo a reverse genetic screen known as TILLING to indentify 175 preselected mutations. This project can greatly benefit the Xenopus community as all mutations will be made available to view on an online database on the Sanger Institute website. Also all mutant sperm and living animals can be made available for use in further research.

The second talk of the day was by Anita Abu-Daya who is currently working in Lyle Zimmerman’s lab at the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) in London. Lyle’s lab has collected a variety of weird and wonderful Xenopus tropicalis mutations over the last few years by the means of gynogenetic screens. In her talk, Anita spoke of a mutant called Whitehart, which after phenotypic analysis was identified to have no circulating blood. Genetic analysis of Whitehart revealed it to have a mutation resulting in a premature stop codon in the Smad 4.1 gene, the mediator Smad of both TGFβ and BMP signalling. But if the embryos lack such an important Smad then why is the phenotype not more extreme? This was deduced to be down to redundancy by the similarly expressed Smad 4.2. This work in summation gave a potential role for BMP signalling for the maintenance of blood. The third talk was given by Nick Owens from Mike Gilchrists lab also at the NIMR. His talk outlined the importance of biological variability when using techniques such as RNAseq. To prove this importance he uses two inbred mothers whose eggs are fertilised with the same father. 8 pools of 20 embryos were collected from both parent combinations to undergo sequencing. His data generally shows the more replicates the better to avoid biological variability. Three replicates will always give more reliable results than two.

The next set of talks included one from Tom Bates of Esther Bell’s lab (Kings College London). His work showed a novel TGFβ inhibitor, Coco, to be expressed in the animal pole of gastrula stage embryos. Knock down of Coco by host transfer techniques and morpholino injection showed a loss of dorsal tissues. His work could be summarised by a model suggesting Coco to be regulating germ layer specification via its inhibition of TGFβ in the animal pole. Siwei Zhang of Enrique Amaya’s lab (University of Manchester) spoke about the role of Fezf2/TLE4 in diencephalon development. He showed Fefz2 to be expressed during Xenopus neurulation and in the forebrain of tailbud and tadpole stage embryos. mRNA injection of Fefz2 resulted in dorsal anteriorized embryos leading to a hypothesis of Fefz2 regulating Wnt signalling in the diencephalon area. Next up was Natalie Gibb from Stefan Hoppler’s lab (University of Aberdeen). She demonstrated a role for Sfrp1 in promoting myocardial differentiation. Her talk contained some stunning images and videos demonstrating the ability of Sfrp1 to modulate the size of the developing heart. Coinjection of Sfrp1 and Wnt6 rescued the dual axis phenotype usually associated with Wnt overexpression. This indicates a role for Sfrp1 in modulating Wnt signalling during myocardial development. The last talk of this set was from Neil Roberts (University of Manchester). His work used Xenopus as a disease model to characterise mutations which may result in the unusual disease, Urofacial syndrome a human disease with symptoms including bladder dysfunction and abnormal facial expressions. His work, funded by Kidney Research UK, indicates potential for mutations in the Heparanase-2 gene to be causative of the disease.

Between talks a delicious buffet lunch was supplied which allowed all conference attendees to sit outside and enjoy the outrageously beautiful day upon which the conference took place. With the sun shining everyone moved outside to continue their discussions and meet new people within the community. Also at this time a tour was provided of the Sanger Institutes very own Illumina HiSeq equipment allowing certain attendees to see these powerful machines in action. This also gave the opportunity for us to talk to some of the sponsors. One which I found particularly interesting was Biostatus whom have developed what they are calling CyGEL, a thermoreversible gel which can be used to immobilise living organisims such as the Xenopus allowing live cell imaging.

The next round of talks started with Jerome Jullien of John Gurdon’s lab. He demonstrated genome wide reprogramming of somatic nuclei by the Xenopus oocyte transcription machinery. Nuclear transfer was shown to increase Serine 2 phosphorylation found on RNA polymerase II, a phosphorylation state associated with transcription elongation. Clara Collart of Jim Smith’s lab (NIMR) gave the next talk on the role of YRNAs during midblastula transition (MBT). YRNAs are expressed maternally and their expression increases after MBT. Mopholino knockdown of specific YRNAs results in normal looking embryos until MBT which is known to be the onset of transcription. All previous transcription occurring in the embryo is maternal. Clara demonstrates that YRNAs are capable of interacting with chromatin after MBT to promote the onset of DNA replication in Xenopus. Hugh Woodland (University of Warwick) finished this set of talks with a rather puzzling and insightful presentation demonstrating the relationship between oocyte and follicle cell RNA localisation. RNAs are known to exchange via transport pathways between the oocyte and macrovilli/nanotubules extending into the surrounding follicle cells. Conversely, Hugh’s data provides evidence for particles in the oocyte nanotubules to represent an RNA transport pathway from follicle cells to the oocyte. This suggests that follicle cells may contribute to stored egg RNAs. To solve this conundrum he has transplanted primordial follicle mesoderm from Xenopus borealis into Xenopus laevis to see which species RNA will be present in the follicle cells and oocytes. The problem is he still has a long time to wait for these frogs to fully mature.

The last set of the day started off with Eric Theveneau from Roberto Mayor’s lab (UCL). He presented the importance of placodes, found in the gaps between branchial arches, in modulating neural crest migration. He uses Sdf1 as a marker for the placodes to demonstrate an intrinsic attraction of neural crest cells towards Sdf1 positive cells leading to efficient co-ordination of these cell types during cranial morphogenesis. Roberto Paredes (University of Manchester) next spoke of his research into the behaviour of myeloid cells after injury. He has developed an effective method to visualise myeloid cells in vivo demonstrating a fast response by neutrophils in response to injury and a comparatively slower response by macrophages. The last talk of the day was given by Matt Guille (University of Portsmouth) who when not conducting his own research is an indispensible member of the Xenopus community for his work in managing the European Xenopus Resource Centre in Portsmouth. Today however, he was not talking about the centre but his own research on histone function in early Xenopus development. The specific histones H2A.Z1 and H2A.Z2 were the primary focus of the talk. These are implicated to be involved in transcription activation and differ by only 3 amino acids. They give similar expression patterns found at several stages of Xenopus development. Knock down of H2A.Z1 shows a loss of Lmo2, Tbx, Hex and Brachyury shown by insitu hybridisation and animal cap experiments.

One of the most important parts of the UK national Xenopus conference is the community discussion at the end. This gives anyone the chance to voice concerns over all manner of topics including the Portsmouth resource centre, funding and even problems arising with scientific techniques. The key points made in this discussion included the announcement of the opening of the American Xenopus resource centre which can be found at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. A general update of the resources available at the Portsmouth centre. Finally, a suggestion to all Xenopus researchers to keep a careful log of antibodies they have previously used and found to be successful. This kind of information could save Xenopus researches a lot of valuable time and money by producing an accessible database of these antibodies. The day ended with the usual drinks and nibbles and for me a short drive home to Norwich. I had a fantastic day at the conference and would strongly recommend attending it next year if you are working in the Xenopus field. I personally will be eagerly anticipating what new and exciting research next year’s meeting will bring.

(10 votes)

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All is well. The Kazakh family is unbelievable. They have
been catching more than 20 females each night although almost every
one of them died the first two nights. We think it’s because they overheated during the day before they were able to bring them to me. So now they’re bringing the
animals each night after they finish the collection which was
about 1 am the first night and 2 am last night. I am becoming one with
my nocturnal animals. The unfortunate thing (besides my lack of sleep)
is that these guys are much more agressive than the animals in my
colony back home, and especially pissed off and active at night after
being trapped in a small cage. Thank goodness for my gloves with leather
fingertips. They try desperately to take their vengeance on my hand and
instead get a mouthful of leather. Perhaps it still makes them feel
good to think they’re punishing me.

Many of the embryos are too old for my analyses, but the pregnancy
rate is so high this year that I’m still getting a lot of embryos of
the stages I want. 25 litters so far, to be precise. Which is more
than 90 embryos for two night’s work. At this rate I’ll have a
bumper crop in no time and perhaps be finished a bit early. Definitely
in time to switch gears for phase 2 of the biomechanics work when the
grad student working with me arrives from Boston in a couple of weeks.

Not sure what happened this year though. The climate is no different
from when I’ve been here before.The temperatures are tracking the
same. There’s hardly any vegetation yet, and the trees haven’t budded.
But the jerboas have all clearly fed well and are breeding at least
1-2 weeks earlier than before. Maybe there are annual cycles I’m not
aware of. A professor at the Academy of Sciences told me that about
once in 5-7 years there are almost no jerboas. Maybe this is the
opposing peak of that valley.

In any case, I can’t complain. Given the difficulty of this work and
all of the many many factors that are out of my control, I have to say
I am pretty pleased. Fingers crossed this run of good luck continues.

(2 votes)

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Upcoming deadlines: oral abstract, poster abstract and early bird registration – 23 April 2012

Meeting chairs: Dr Clare Blackburn and Dr Val Wilson (University of Edinburgh)

Topics:
•  Gut and associated organs: when, where and how do stem  cells arise?
•  Specifying the hematopoietic lineage
•  Stem cell development
•  Specifying the neural lineage
•  PGCs

Invited speakers: check out the list of invited speaker on the meeting website  (www.abcam.com/edinburgh)

Meeting deadlines – 23 April 2012:
•  Oral abstracts
•  Poster abstracts
•  Early bird registration

Meeting website: www.abcam.com/edinburgh

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I ate a horse. Seriously. I ate horse meat tonight. I wouldn’t have ordered it, and I don’t feel so good about myself for doing it, but I believe in adapting and respecting a culture which includes eating pretty much anything (that’s not obviously unsafe) that’s put in front of me (with the exception of bugs). I had been invited to join another banquet in honor of an English couple and their son who are visiting to studying some of the chinese herbal plants. We went to a big multistory fancy Uyghur restaurant that’s more in the Chinese style with Uyghur influence. The first restaurant I’ve been to here with security guards out front and a bag check before you walk in the front door. We were taken up an elevator to the third floor and ushered to a small banquet room where each seat had a hotpot burner with broth and the waitstaff passed out aprons. What a scene. My good friend “Alice” (her English name) was instructed by the host to order, so a whole bunch plates of raw meat and vegetables came out onto the table. She seemed to take great pleasure in ordering some of the most expensive things on the menu knowing the host (a retired scientist and regional party official) wouldn’t refuse. The meat and vegetables get dunked into the pot of boiling spicy broth until they’re cooked and then fished out and eaten. A small plate of what looked like sliced salami rolled around in front of me, and Alice gave a sly smile and said “horse”. Really. Horse. So I took a piece to try it – in part so I can now say I’ve eaten horse. It was already cooked – dry roasted and lightly smoked and tasted different from any other kind of meat I’ve had. Interesting.

Other than that I’ve just been spending my weekend in Urumqi arranging things to return to Fukang on Monday and dive into the dissections. I had to make a few solutions, so now all of that is done. I needed to find a freezer and fortunately a professor here decided to buy a new small deep freezer for the lab and will loan it to me first for a few weeks. So we spent 2 hours yesterday and another 4 hours today running about between three different stores trying to find a freezer in stock that would be easy to get paid for by government money. As we were leaving the institute this morning, a throng of about 200 middle school students carrying pails of water rushed passed us led by kids holding red flags. I asked what in the world was going on, and my friends said it’s international environment day. I thought they meant earth day, but that’s not for a few more weeks. I have no idea what was the holiday, but I saw so many ordinary people (not city workers) out cleaning things – street lamps, fences, bus stops. There was a whole line of about a dozen people with rags squatted down busy wiping the black grime off of a fence that runs between the street and sidewalk. All in business suits. Common attire here. Years ago I once saw a guy laying paving stones wearing a business suit and dress shoes.

And the first part of this week is the Tomb Sweeping (Qingming) festival in honor of the ancestors, so there are carts all over the city selling fake paper money, incense, plastic fruit, and small plastic trees. The custom is to visit the cemeteries and give these offerings (burning the money) in honor of the ancestors. And since Monday and Tuesday are a holiday, everyone has had to work saturday and sunday to make up for the time. Fascinating…

Since I started this post 4 days ago, I have made it back to the field station and have collected 25 litters of embryos in 2 days. Success! However, the internet is down, so we had to find an internet cafe in the town. The smoke is getting to be a bit more than I can handle for now, so stay tuned for the next update…

(4 votes)

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A few weeks ago, over 150 Canadian and international graduate students, post-docs and scientists met for the 6^th biennial Canadian Developmental Biology Conference. This year’s conference was held in the middle of the world-renowned Rocky Mountains, in the beautiful town of Banff, Alberta. Although the blue skies and snow-covered mountaintops beckoned, a program filled with captivating speakers, 100 great poster presentations and even a dancing lesson from Albertan cowboys proved to be a worthy competitor for our attention.

Based on conversations with conference participants, one of the best features of this conference was its diversity. The talks focused on five research themes, covering a variety of model systems including worm, fly, frog, mouse, fish, Arabidopsis and planaria. The first theme was embryogenesis and cell polarity. It included a talk from Helen McNeil (University of Toronto) on the mechanisms by which fat family cadherins signal through the mitochondria to effect planar cell polarity in Drosophila and a talk from Janet Rossant (University of Toronto) on the signaling pathways involved in early lineage decisions in mouse embryos. The second theme, epigenetics and development, included among others, Sabine Cordes’ (University of Toronto) talk about the polycomb-dependent epigenetic mechanisms in neural development. The next two sessions focused on cell signaling and cell fate specification in development.  Some of the great talks in these sessions included a talk by Andrew Waskiewicz (University of Alberta) about the use of zebrafish to study ocular birth defects such as coloboma and a talk by Brent Bobick (University of Calgary) on how the transcription factor Shox2 is necessary in mice to repress cartilage formation. Lastly, the conference finished off with a session on cell size and proliferation. This session encompassed talks from Nam-Sung Moon (McGill Univeristy) on factors that synergize with Rb in Drosophila as well as a talk from Bret Pearson (University of Toronto) about how planaria control the proliferation of their adult stem cells.

On top of all the great sessions, one of the highlights of the conference was the keynote lecture by Utpal Banerjee (UCLA). He focused on recent work in his lab which uses hemaopoetic cells in Drosophila to study how stress signals can interact with and influence cell metabolism. The chance to see such a distinguished researcher speak was truly inspirational for all of us graduate students in the early stages of our careers. As well as wowing the crowd with his science, Utpal Banerjee also took time to participate in a special session on teaching methods in undergraduate developmental biology. In this session, he focused on methods such as “Research Deconstruction” which have been implemented at UCLA with great success thus far.  Also of note was the second special lecture by Pierre Chambon (IGBMC) on transcriptional control by nuclear receptors.

After all the science, we had a chance to experience some Albertan culture at the “Cowboy and Western” banquet offsite at a huge tent in the mountains.  While keeping warm by the gigantic bonfire, we ate barbeque and learned how to do traditional line dancing from a duo of cowboy singers who were the entertainment for the night.  It was a great chance to let loose, catch up with old acquaintances and meet some new friends!

Overall this was a great conference filled with interesting talks, engaging poster sessions and lots of time to interact with the best scientists and researchers from around the country.  Congratulations to all of the following winners of the poster competition, each of whom won $100: Namal Abeysundara, Corey Arnold, Ben Chan, Devon Germain, Felix Gunawan, Xue Han, Yoichi Kawabe, Lauren Killip, Kate Krivy, Karen Lange, Saiqun Li, Stephanie McMillan, Stephen Nemec, Stanley Neufeld, Jeremy Saban, Tara Stach, Simone Superina, and Chris Wang. Also congratulations to the winners of a Society of Developmental Biology sponsored $1000 travel credit to go to the 71^st International SDB meeting in Montreal in July.  The graduate student winner was Steffen Biechele and the postdoc winner was Elizabeth Rideout.  On behalf of us, and all the conference participants, we’d like to say a big thanks to the conference organizers Sarah Childs and Carol Schuurmans (University of Calgary) for such a stimulating meeting.  Hope to see everyone at the 7^th Canadian Developmental Biology Conference in Montreal in 2014!

By: Lauren Killip and Corey Arnold

(7 votes)

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