If you’ve recently visited our Facebook page, you may have already seen them, but we have some new banners – of both the physical and digital kind.

First of all, we have a new banner to take to conferences. If you’re going to some of the conferences where The Company of Biologists has a stand, you will get to see this in person. Its debut on the conference circuit will be the BSDB/BSCB/JSDB meeting in Warwick next month. Look for the banner there, and you may also find the Node Community Manager Eva Amsen and Development Executive Editor Katherine Brown, who are both attending the conference.

We also have a new digital banner on our Facebook page. Facebook is changing the way that pages look, and required us to switch to a timeline with “cover image”. It incorporates the images we use on promotional material (the banner and flyers) as well as the rainbow menu from the site, so it should look familiar!

We use Facebook to let you know of new Node posts, but also to point you to some interesting content on other websites. We also have a Twitter account, which includes most of the things that are also on Facebook, plus tweets from conferences and retweets from additional interesting sources.

All in all, there are many ways to keep up with the Node, and some of them now have a fresh new look.

(2 votes)

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I have sprung up again in China. It’s time for another field collection of jerboa embryos in far northwestern China (Xinjiang), and since this is the reason Eva invited me to contribute to the Node, I figure it is finally time for me to oblige.

The last couple of days were eventful. Friday morning I was met at my hotel and escorted to the main building of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to give a seminar on my research. It went really well. I had a lot of interest and good questions all around even though this is primarily an ecology institute. Most were interested in how to catch and how to raise the animals. There is a lab here that is interested in studying hibernation in the jerboas, so I’ll be doing my best to advise. That same lab is also doing genetic barcoding of a variety of species in Xinjiang, including the rodents, so it looks like I have extra company for at least part of the field collections. Fantastic for me. I could use as much help as people are willing to offer.

After a tour of the lab spaces, including a room with five small aerial surveillance aircraft and another room with a nice new fancy scanning electron microscope, I headed back to my room to rest for a bit before the scheduled tour of the natural history museum. They have a fantastic museum here, a really wonderful educational resource. The animal rooms have mounts of many of the species that are native to Xinjiang, and they were incredibly well prepared. The feathers and fur are in excellent condition with really good eyes and mounted in postures that make them look ready to leap right off their perch and out the door. More importantly, they have about a half dozen jerboas that are all in accurate postures. This is in stark contrast to all of the mounts I’ve seen in the US and in London that are contorted and weirdly posed in ways you just really don’t ever see a live jerboa. So I guess it does make a big difference for the preparator to actually see the animal they’re stuffing while it’s still alive.

After the tour I was whisked away in a black town car to a restaurant on an upper floor of a highrise building and down the hall to a private dining room. Ahhhh, the Chinese banquet. They lulled me into a false sense of comfort with their low key first evening when in fact I was not getting off easy. I know enough by now to linger about the edge of the table while everyone fusses and argues over the seating arrangement. I sit where I’m told to sit, when I’m told to sit. The custom is that the seat furthest from and facing the door is reserved for the host. The seats to the right and left are seats of honor. And then it goes around the table from there. I was second to the right of the host. Not bad. The other, more important seats were reserved for directors of the Xinjiang Normal University. Chinese banquets are lavish affairs with about twenty times more food on the table than the guests could or will ever consume. There is a lazy susan at the center of the table, and you just grab whatever looks appealing as it glides past. Fortunately, I am happy to just eat whatever lands in front of me without asking what it is. One of the first things I picked up was what I thought was some kind of mushroom. The taste and texture was not inconsistent with that inoffensive thought…and then the professor to my right leaned in to tell me I’d just eaten chicken stomach. Delightful. But you really never know what you’re going to get, so it’s best to keep an open mind.

And while I didn’t get the highest seat of honor, I did get the fish. The last dish to hit the table is the whole fish. And the lazy susan gets turned about until the head is pointing straight at the guest of honor. The person who gets the head gets to take the first bite of the fish. I asked to be sure that didn’t mean I had to actually eat the head. But what they failed to tell me until later is that if the honored guest takes a full drink of baiju (I’ll get to that later), he or she can then order the others at the table to take certain parts of the fish – the eyeballs, lower jaw, dorsal fin. Each has some specific symbolism that I can’t remember because by that point I’d had too much baiju.

Ah, the baiju. Chinese for rotgut white lightening. 65% alcohol served in tiny little eyewash glasses. The glasses are deceitful and make you think you aren’t drinking as much as you are. This is also the first time I was introduced to the culture of the three toasts. At past banquets, the host gives a speech and everyone drinks. Then another important person will speak, and everyone drinks. Then the guest gives a speech, and well, you get the picture. This time there were those same kinds of speeches, but the host gives three speeches that can be interspersed with other speeches, but they are all group speeches. Once the host gives the third speech, then the party can move on to the one on one more casual toasts. The foreigner is always the target in curiosity – how much can you drink? And it’s very critical to doing business in China. I heard this time that there is a written law in Beijing that says no business can be conducted without baiju. I think the top politicians in this country must have liver disease by now. It’s a way of showing your strength, your happiness, your honor. I managed to show remarkable strength and made a good impression on my hosts without spilling my “honor” in front of anyone. Business has officially begun.

(3 votes)

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A 3 years post-doctoral position is immediately available
in the laboratory of Michèle Crozatier and Alain Vincent, at the Centre de
Biologie du Développement CNRS/Toulouse University, France. One main topic of
the lab concerns Drosophila hematopoiesis, the hematopoietic niche and the plasticity
of cell fates in the lymph gland (http://www-cbd.ups-tlse.fr/spip.php?rubrique53).
The candidate will further explore
the function of the niche, in physiological and immune conditions. A strong
background in Cellular and Developmental Biology is required. A background in
bioinformatics is preferred. Pevious experience with Drosophila would be a
plus. Please provide a C.V, a motivation letter and contact information for two
references to Michèle Crozatier (crozat(at)cict.fr ) or Alain Vincent (alain.vincent(at)univ-tlse3.fr). Informal enquiries are welcome.

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Here are the highlights from the current issue of Development:

Chewing the Fat over PCP and growth

The Drosophila protocadherin Fat (Ft) affects planar cell polarity (PCP) but also inhibits the overgrowth of imaginal discs by activating the Hippo pathway. The intracellular domain (ICD) mediates much of Ft activity, but are its PCP and Hippo pathway activities separable? To answer this question, Hitoshi Matakatsu and Seth Blair have undertaken a detailed structure-function analysis of the Ft ICD (see p. 1498). They identify PCP and Hippo pathway-specific domains in the Ft ICD and, surprisingly, report that these domains do not map to any previously identified protein interaction domains in the Ft ICD, nor, with one exception, to the regions that are highly conserved in mammalian Fat4. They also confirm and extend evidence showing that the extracellular domain of Ft has activities in both the PCP and Hippo pathways that are mediated by the protocadherin Dachsous. Based on their results, the authors conclude that the PCP and Hippo pathway activities of Fat and Dachsous are largely separable.

Robo-Slit signals regulate CNS motoneuron axon exit

In mammals, signals transmitted from the central nervous system (CNS) to muscles via motoneurons control movement. To form these circuits, motoneurons extend their axons out of the CNS at specialised exit points. Here (p. 1435), Zaven Kaprielian and colleagues use mouse spinal accessory motoneurons (SACMNs) to investigate how this essential phase of motor axon pathfinding is controlled. SACMNs, which innervate neck and back muscles, leave the spinal cord at lateral exit points (LEPs). In mice lacking the homeodomain transcription factor Nkx2.9, the researchers report, SACMN axons project normally to the LEP but fail to exit the CNS. Robo2 expression in SACMNs is downregulated in Nkx2.9 null mice, they report, and SACMN axons fail to exit the spinal cord in Robo2-deficient animals. Finally, the Robo2 ligands Slit1-3 are present at the LEP and SACMN axons fail to exit the CNS in Slit-deficient mice. Together, these results suggest that Nkx2.9 controls SACMN axon exit from the CNS by regulating Robo2-Slit signalling.

sRNA paths to plant female gamete development

During the first phase of Arabidopsis female gamete formation (megasporogenesis), a somatic ovule cell differentiates into a megaspore mother cell and divides to generate four haploid megaspores. In the next phase (megagametogenesis), one of these megaspores undergoes syncytial mitosis and differentiates to form the female gametophyte. It’s known that a somatic small RNA (sRNA) pathway restricts reproductive potential to this functional megaspore but what controls the megasporogenesis to megagametogenesis transition? Here (p. 1399), Matthew Tucker and co-workers examine gene expression patterns in ovule tissues and show that an sRNA pathway is also involved in this phase of female gamete formation. The researchers report that ARGONAUTE5 (AGO5), a putative sRNA pathway effector, is expressed around reproductive cells during megasporogenesis and show that a unique semi-dominant ago5-4 insertion allele disrupts the initiation of megagametogenesis. Expression of a viral RNAi suppressor protein in the somatic cells flanking the megaspores produces a similar phenotype. Thus, the researchers conclude, at least two somatic sRNA pathways contribute to female gametophyte development in Arabidopsis.

PHD-fingers point to meristem initiation

Apical meristems, which are indispensable for plant growth and development, contain stem cells and the organizer, both of which are specified during early embryogenesis. During root meristem initiation, specification of hypophysis (the precursor of the organizer) requires the transcription factor MONOPTEROS (MP), which functions in part by activating the expression of TARGET of MP (TMO) transcription factors. But how does MP activate the expression of these genes in the context of chromatin to regulate meristem initiation? On p. 1391, Yoshibumi Komeda and colleagues report that the plant homeodomain (PHD)-finger proteins OBERON (OBE) and TITANIA (TTA) are essential for MP-dependent embryonic root meristem initiation in Arabidopsis. They show that these PHD-finger proteins interact with each other and that, although MP expression is unaltered by mutations in OBE/TTA genes, the expression of TMO5 and TMO7 is locally lost in obe1 obe2 embryos. These and other data indicate that PHD-finger protein complexes control the activation of transcription factor genes during root meristem initiation.

Joining forces in the neural tube

In developing vertebrates, neural tube closure (NTC) – the formation of the neural tube from a sheet of neural ectoderm – requires both neural ectoderm and non-neural ectoderm. But, whereas cell shape changes, cell rearrangement and cell division in the neural ectoderm are essential for NTC, the cellular changes in the non-neural ectoderm that contribute to NTC are unclear. Now, on p. 1417, Naoto Ueno and co-workers use digital scanned laser light sheet fluorescence microscopy to examine the movements of non-neural ectoderm cells in Xenopus embryos during NTC. The researchers show that the collective movement of deep-layer non-neural ectoderm cells towards the dorsal midline helps to drag along the superficial non-neural ectoderm during NTC. Inhibition of this movement by deletion of integrin β1 function, they report, blocks NTC completion. By contrast, oriented cell division, cell shape changes and cell rearrangement in the non-neural ectoderm have little or no role in NTC. Together, these results suggest that a global reorganisation of embryonic tissues is involved in NTC.

Neurula rotation breaks ascidian LR symmetry

In many vertebrate embryos, monocilia-generated fluid flow in the node establishes left-sided mesodermal expression of nodal and breaks embryonic symmetry, which leads to the stereotypical left-right (LR) asymmetry seen in most animals. Tadpole larvae of the ascidian Halocynthia roretzi also show LR asymmetry but ascidian embryos have no cavity in which fluid flow can be generated. Now, Kazuhiko Nishide and colleagues show that in H. roretzi left-sided expression of nodal, triggered by neurula rotation, in the epidermis at the late neurula stage is required for LR asymmetry (p. 1467). Shortly before the onset of nodal expression, they report, the neurula rotates within the vitelline membrane until its left side is orientated downwards. Monocilia in the epidermis probably generate the driving force for this rotation. Moreover, experimental perturbation of neurula rotation indicates that contact between the left epidermis and the vitelline membrane generated through neurula rotation promotes left-sided nodal expression. Neurula rotation could also be involved in the establishment of LR asymmetry in other ascidian species, suggest the researchers.

Plus…

Diverse roles for VEGF-A in the nervous system

Recent studies, reviewed by Francesca Mackenzie and Christiana Ruhrberg, have shown that vascular endothelial growth factor A, which is best known for its roles in blood vessel growth, promotes a wide range of neuronal functions.

See the Review article on p. 1371

(1 votes)

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Dear Colleagues,

FlyBase has begun to plan for the competitive renewal of FlyBase funding, which will be submitted to NIH in several months. EXTENSIVE INPUT from the community of FlyBase users is invaluable in two ways. (1) It is a crucial source of input to help us determine our priorities for the next five year period. (2) The level of response is taken by our funders as a very important metric of how much the community cares about the continued survival of the FlyBase genomic and genetic database resource. In these days of competing demands for funds for research resources, the importance of this demonstration of community support for FlyBase by completing the survey cannot be overstated.

For both these reasons, we ask you to respond to the survey by March 31st and to encourage your colleagues to do so.

Please understand that we are not asking for platitudes, but for your frank views of what we are doing well, what we need to improve, and what directions we should be thinking about for the future.  We have designed the survey so that it should not take more than five or ten minutes of your time, and of course your contributions are completely anonymous.

We conducted a similar survey for our previous grant renewal, and we had a terrific response of 1,165 community members completing the survey. We hope that even more of you will respond this time.

We thank you in advance for your support by responding to this survey request.

FlyBase 2012 User Survey

Sincerely,

The FlyBase Consortium

(2 votes)

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(This interview originally appeared in Development.)

The Latin American Society for Developmental Biology (LASDB) is getting ready for their Sixth International Meeting, which will be held in Montevideo, Uruguay, from April 26th to 29th, 2012. To find out more about the society, and about developmental biology in Latin America, we talked to LASDB president José Xavier Neto, who studies heart morphogenesis at the Laboratório Nacional de Biociências in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

What are your research interests?

I have been working on cardiac development ever since I was first trained in developmental biology. From this focus on cardiac development, I slowly became interested in evolution, and in using clues that evolution gives us to understand development. I have been trying to incorporate a lot of that into our research. Another research question that I’m very interested in is: how can we use information extracted from protein structures and the evolution of proteins of interest to understand evolution and development? But my main interest has always been cardiac development.

Which organisms do you work with?

I was trained as a mouse developmental biologist, but when I returned to Brazil in 1999 after postdoctoral research at Harvard University, I quickly realised that it would have been impossible to continue my mouse research here. Working with mice is amazingly expensive, and in Brazil, at that time, we did not have the facilities to handle those numbers of mice. So I switched to chicken, and that became my primary model.

You’re president of the Latin American Society for Developmental Biology (LASDB). What’s the history of the society?

The LASDB was created in 2003. It was spearheaded by Roberto Mayor from Chile, who had the idea to create a society for young scientists returning to Latin America from their postdocs abroad. Roberto is very well connected and got a lot of support from other people connected with Latin America.

In 2003 we had our first meeting in Valle Nevado, Chile. After that we’ve had meetings in Brazil, Argentina and in Chile again. The next meeting will be in Uruguay from April 26th to 29th, 2012. Over the years, the society has grown, and it’s a great pleasure to be able to witness more and more people participating in the meeting. Nevertheless, we have been able to keep the quality of the meeting very high. That’s something that was always on everyone’s mind: we want to grow, but grow while preserving quality.

As a society you cover almost an entire continent. Are there any particular challenges in dealing with all those different countries?

Absolutely. Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile represent the major communities of developmental biologists within Latin America. There are smaller communities of investigators in other countries, but when it comes to setting up a meeting you need a lot of local support, and not all countries can support such a meeting.

This is a challenge. We would like to spread developmental biology throughout Latin America, to create a network, to get all researchers integrated, to raise opportunities for students and young researchers – but we have to rely on local support to hold meetings. As part of this mission, we’re very happy to extend our meeting to Uruguay this year. This has been a very interesting exercise. Although Uruguay is a big country, it’s not yet as easy to do things over there as it is in Mexico, Chile, Argentina or Brazil.

How does the LASDB support young researchers in particular?

The society does several things. We would like to support students with scholarships, but this has not been possible because we don’t have the money yet. What we have been doing is creating networks to link people throughout Latin America. For instance, last year members of the society founded LAZEN – a network for people in Latin America who work with zebrafish.

Another thing we have set up is the website. We realised that if you want people to connect and be involved, you should have a lively website that provides a good platform for people to interact. We’re trying to do that now, and are keeping the site alive with discussions on the forums. Through the website we also hope to encourage people to become paying members of the society, which will help raise money to set up fellowships to support students or sponsor books. But that’s for the future. At the moment we’re mainly concerned with building networks and with extending the society to all the countries of Latin America, to create a base for interaction for the society to work.

Are there any particular challenges that researchers in Latin America might have that are not commonly encountered in other parts of the world?

Yes, there are many challenges. Fortunately, in Brazil, where I work, things have turned for the good in recent years and in a very impressive manner. Science funding has been steadily increasing. Grants are reviewed by professionals within the community, and financial support has been stable. But Brazil still has classic problems. For instance, the country has a very complicated customs system that often delays supplies. Animal research is another problem because there is no professional network of animal providers. Most of the animal raising is undertaken at university centres, which have not been up to the task of breeding large numbers of high-quality healthy animals. For some areas, such as mouse developmental biology, this is a huge problem. Part of the problem is that it’s very hard for universities to hire technicians. So a lot of services have been structured on a very insecure basis, depending on people that were there for two years on a fellowship. When they left, new people would have to be trained all over again. We simply did not have all the instruments in place to set up animal facilities.

Considering these barriers, how do you make sure that people come back to their country after a postdoc abroad?

The brain drain has been a problem for all emerging countries. But I can give you a personal testimony about Brazil. I started my postdoc in 1997 in the USA, when research in Brazil was just picking up. After one year in the States I was already eager to go back because the place where I was working gave me all the opportunities that I needed to start a group doing my own research back in Brazil. The state of Sao Paulo has a funding body, called FAPESP, which has been in existence since the 1960s. They have a stable source of tax income and distribute money in a peer-reviewed fashion. If you are a young scientist in Brazil and you do a successful postdoc in the UK, Europe, USA or Japan, for instance, you stand a very high chance of getting a Young Investigator Award from FAPESP when you return to Brazil. These awards will pay for your salary, equipment and consumables for five years. That is enough time for you to move and get set up, and to find a place to get a permanent position.

I tell all my former students that are doing postdocs in the States: “Listen, Brazil really turned into a good place to start a lab.”

Is the situation the same in other Latin American countries?

Chile is ahead of Brazil in many ways. When I was in Chile in 2003 for the inaugural meeting of the society, I was very impressed: I was in the hotel where they were actually signing the Free Trade Agreement with the European Union. In Brazil we’re still discussing and negotiating, but they had already done that. Chile also has a very good customs system, so things get there much more quickly than in Brazil. They have very good universities and research centres, a good funding structure and good researchers.

Argentina has always had wonderful researchers, and they have several Nobel prizes. They have a good tradition and fantastic research centres, but I’m not sure about the quality of the funding there. Uruguay still needs to spread research throughout the country, but they do have very good centres, such as the Institut Pasteur. Finally, Mexico also has wonderful universities and researchers. In the rest of Latin America, the research situation is not as good as in these countries.

What are the particular areas of research at which Latin America excels?

That’s a great question. I think we have a lot of room here for creativity, to do very creative research. As soon as we do something that competes directly with our colleagues in the USA or in Europe, who are often building directly on earlier research, we’re going to lose nine times out of ten because we simply do not have the structure yet to be fast and efficient. But in an interesting twist, if you decide to go for different subjects or if you try to think ahead ten to fifteen years then you’re not worried about what’s being done now. You have a niche. This gives Latin American researchers the opportunity to be bold and to create something original.

(4 votes)

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Dear Colleagues,

IBMB SYMPOSIUMWe are pleased to announce that it is now possible to register for the

*Venue:* Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Spain

– Organogenesis

We would encourage you to please circulate this announcement to anyone you
feel might be interested in attending, and to post the attached poster in
your institute!

We look forward to welcoming you to Barcelona, Spain!!

(2 votes)

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Biology has been revolutionized by the impact of physical forces on cell behaviour as in vivo cells are exposed to a combination of biochemical and physical cues that regulate their function. These revolutions have generated in biologists and physicists a need for new tools to analyze cellular structures. In fact, this was precisely the motivation of the “Quantissue Symposium” organised by Hernán López-Scheir and that was held in the CRG the 13-15^th February 2012 in Barcelona (Spain).

The main benefits for attendees have been the gained insights into the quantitative description and analysis of biological processes. This symposium provided also a forum for scientists working at the interface of physical and biological science to discuss technologies, processes and ideas. We want to share with all of you the hot topics in this field and hope that this is also useful for those that were not able to attend!

Mechanical cell forces (pushes, pulls, tensions, compressions) are important regulators of cell development and behaviour because cells use tension to stabilize their structure. But tension, understood as the sum of biochemical stimulus and physical cues, not only gives cells their shape, but also helps to regulate their biochemistry. To understand this complexity of biological systems in the context of development and disease, modelling and biological computer simulation were addressed (we would like to highlight Xavier Treapat’s and James A. Glazier’s talks) and appeared as the common issue among the meeting talks as a powerful approach to resolve and quantify, at the subcellular and even molecular levels, the spatiotemporal dynamics of molecules and processes inside cells.

Alfonso Martínez Arias’ main interest is to understand the molecular basis of embryonic stem cell pluripotency. He spoke about the “sensitivity” inherent to this cellular state to transcriptional noise associated with the transcription factor Nanog.

During lunchtime we have enjoyed a delicious meal in an ideal environment (in front of the Mediterranean sea!) creating an atmosphere that fosters dialogue and debate on thoughts and ideas. Furthermore, the “Quantissue Symposium” offered the alternative to present scientific work in a poster format. We believe this is a very interesting option that has two-way information exchange: the audience is more likely to question and there is a real opportunity for detailed discussion. In addition, we must mention that we were impressed about the quality of the work presented in this design!

We had the opportunity after the Symposium to attend the complementary Workshop:
“Tracking across scales: from single molecules to cells” that was coordinated by Richard Adams, Carl-Philipp Heisenberg, and Marcos González-Gaitán. It was the perfect moment to learn in a more exclusive but also practical environment the latest techniques in the biophysical field.

Our “Quantissue Symposium” home message: Apart from enhancing synergies between different groups, the symposium emphasized that cells are the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms, whereas cellular forces and transcriptional noise are responsible for tissue architecture and shaping the embryo!

(6 votes)

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Last week, I attended the GSA Drosophila Genetics Meeting in Chicago. You’ll hear more about the main part of the meeting later, or you can check out the Storify of the tweets from the conference. In this post I wanted to specifically highlight one of the lunch sessions.

The GSA had invited Jennifer Zeitzer, Director of Legislative Relations at FASEB, to talk about science advocacy over lunch. There were about a dozen scientists in the room, but what she talked about is interesting to quite a number of people, so I’ll try to recap some of the main points she made.

The talk was aimed at American researchers, but much of the message is applicable to other countries: Politicians know very little about science, they never meet scientists, and there is always a limited amount of money to be distributed. If you want these things to change, you can, and should, step up. Here are a few of the points Jennifer discussed in her talk:

Be vocal
One of the main points Jennifer made, was that scientists need to be more vocal. Small organizations that make a lot of noise always get a lot of attention (she gave the Tea Party as example) but scientists barely make themselves seen or heard to politicians. She emphasized the importance of individuals fighting for science policies and science funding. Even though there are various professional organizations fighting on researchers’ behalves, it makes a much bigger impression if scientists themselves come up and speak to politicians.

Have a clear message
Your message should be clear and very specific. Ask for specific amounts, or for support for specific projects. Be realistic in terms of what you can expect, and be prepared to address suggested trade-offs.

Contact politicians and build relationships
In countries like the US and UK (and others with similar voting systems) you will have a local elected official or member of parliament whom you can email or make an appointment with. They are representing you and the other people living in your area, and they really want to hear from you.

If you email, make sure to only include one issue per message, and be very clear. Several politicians are also on Twitter. Some have aides that handle those media for them, while others do it themselves.

Because so few politicians know any scientists personally, they will be happy to meet you, and may even want to pick your brain in the future. Even PhD students and postdocs, who may feel they’re not senior enough, are incredibly useful contacts for politicians to have. To them, you ARE a scientist. You’re using the funding and the facilities and doing the work! And if they ask you something you don’t know, you can always tell them that you will ask someone or look it up.

If you don’t know any politicians personally, keep an eye out for possible connections, via alumni organization, for example.

Generate public awareness
Another way to be involved in science advocacy is simply by doing anything that increases the public awareness of the impact of research in your community. You can give talks at schools or community groups, invite elected officials to visit your lab, or write a letter to the local paper.

The FASEB office of public affairs (where Jennifer works) is on Twitter as @FASEBopa and their website also has a handy list of advocacy resources for scientists.

To add to these notes of the advocacy lunch, I wanted to share a real-world case of science advocacy that involved many of the examples in this talk. In 2010, a group of scientists in the UK managed to stop a proposed cut in science funding. The Science is Vital campaign was started by individuals (not an organization), made extensive use of contacts to reach politicians and the public, involved scientists rallying at parliament and people meeting politicians for conversations, and had a very clear and specific message. Find out more on their site.
(Their follow-up campaign, on science careers, was covered on the Node.)

(4 votes)

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The progress of stem cell research depends on the ability to grow stem cells in culture.  Embryonic stem (ES) cells from some organisms, such as humans, have proven difficult to culture.  While it is known that there are differences in early development between even closely-related species, understanding where these differences begin will help biologists understand how to culture other ES cells, and will contribute to our understanding of pre-implantation development.  A recent paper in Development helps sort out some of these nuances.

Before implantation, an early mammalian embryo has already formed three distinct cell lineages.  First, the trophectoderm lineage is segregated from cells of the inner cell mass, and will contribute to the placenta.  Within the inner cell mass, the hypoblast precursors, which contribute to the yolk sac, are segregated from the epiblast precursors, which will become the actual embryo.  In mice, the segregation of hypoblast and epiblast lineages is regulated by FGF/MAP kinase signaling, and inhibition of MEK signaling prevents ES cells from differentiating.  Despite this knowledge of mouse early development and embryonic stem cells, human ES cells remain difficult to culture.  Kuijk and colleagues recently published work describing the differences in the signaling involved in hypoblast and epiblast lineage segregation in both human and bovine cultured embryos.  Specifically, bovine embryos with stimulated FGF and heparin levels had only hypoblast cells but no epiblast cells, and MEK inhibition resulted in more epiblast cells and fewer hypoblast cells.  That hypoblast cells were not completely ablated after MEK inhibition indicates that other signaling is important in hypoblast differentiation.  Interestingly, MEK inhibition of early human embryos did not affect the numbers of hypoblast and epiblast cells.  Images above are of an early human embryo, immunostained for NANOG (to mark early epiblast cells) and GATA4/6 (to mark early hypoblast cells).  At this point in development (day 6), the epiblast precursors are surrounded by hypoblast precursors, indicating that the physical separation of the cell lineages has occurred.

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

Kuijk, E., van Tol, L., Van de Velde, H., Wubbolts, R., Welling, M., Geijsen, N., & Roelen, B. (2012). The roles of FGF and MAP kinase signaling in the segregation of the epiblast and hypoblast cell lineages in bovine and human embryos Development, 139 (5), 871-882 DOI: 10.1242/dev.071688

(2 votes)

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