The overall aim of this call is to support proposals that:
Develop the next generation of non-animal technologies that mimic the physiological environment enabling a whole system/ multi-system approach for discovery and translational science.
Enhance the capacity and confidence in non-animal technologies.
Establish partnerships between academia, the SME sector, and industry.
Proposals must fall within the BBSRC’s remit to qualify for funding and the research supported should have the realistic possibility of replacing the use of specific in vivo models or animal studies in line with the NC3Rs mission. Projects can run for up to 24 months and should begin by January 2023. Awards are for up to £250k full economic cost and the BBSRC and NC3Rs will fund 80% of the full economic cost. The competition will close on 8 September.
If you are interested in applying for the call, don’t miss the applicant webinar on Thursday 14 July at 10am (BST), where you will have the chance to ask any questions you may have about this new funding opportunity.
After attending several virtual conferences over the past two years, EMBO/EMBL symposium on Mechanobiology in development and disease, held at EMBL Heidelberg between the 15th to 18th of May 2022, was my first in-person meeting since Covid-19 hit. I was excited and equally nervous because my abstract had been selected for an oral presentation at this esteemed platform. This meeting was held in a hybrid format involving participants on-site as well as virtually.
Invited talks were mixed with selected short talks, followed by a “Meeting with speakers” at the end of each session. Also, days 2 and 3 culminated with flash talks by enthusiastic poster presenters, which were refreshing. Some of the flash talk presenters used innovative and hilarious ways to attract the audience to their posters, thus keeping us interested and curious even towards the end of a very busy day. Researchers, enjoying their drinks, congregated around the posters, which were displayed along the distinctive DNA double-helix-shaped staircases of the EMBL building. The virtual attendees also participated with their queries after each presentation via a chairperson for the session. A few highlights from the meeting which captivated me the most were as follows:
Tissue and organ morphogenesis: Day 1 of the meeting started with a wonderful keynote presentation by Ed Munro (University of Chicago, USA) on tissue morphogenesis in an Ascidian, Ciona robusta. He showed mesmerizing movies of neural tube zippering caused by concurrent events of tissue contraction and relaxation at the anterior and posterior end, respectively. Jean-Leon Maitre (Institut Curie, France) showed how hydrostatic pressure fractures the adhesion between cell contacts forming microlumens that coarse with time due to the contractile cell surface. These microlumens eventually fuse to form a single large fluid-filled cavity known as blastocoel in an early-stage mammalian embryo. Amy Shyer (Rockefeller University, USA) discussed the self-organization of tissue patterns in dermis explants which results due to cell-intrinsic contractility and the mechanical properties of the underlying extracellular matrix.
Nuclear mechanotransduction: The meeting revealed multiple exciting discoveries related to nuclear mechanotransduction i.e. how the “brain of the cell” i.e. the nucleus responds to different mechanical environments. The extracellular matrix transduces force to the nucleus through focal adhesions (connecting ECM to the cell surface) and the cytoskeleton (connecting focal adhesions to the nuclear envelop). Pere Roca-Cusachs (Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and Universitat de Barcelona, Spain) demonstrated how the stiffness of ECM modulates nuclear shape and pore size thereby affecting the nuclear import/export of a transcriptional regulator known as YAP. Windie Hoefs (Francis Crick Institute) shared her work on the opposing roles of cell-cell adhesion and cell-matrix adhesion in regulating the nuclear localization of YAP when the cells are mechanically stretched. Alice Willart (Institut Curie, France) showed variations in nuclear volume under different magnitudes of mechanical confinement, while Adel Al Jord (Collège de France, France) discussed the role of cytoplasmic forces in organizing nuclear condensates, nucleoli, and mRNA splicing in mammalian and fly oocytes and showed their significance in maintaining organism fertility.
Tissue repair, maintenance, and disease: Genomic instabilities or aberrations can lead to a myriad of deleterious consequences such as cancer and apoptosis. Rong Li (Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore) showed that mitotic errors cause hypo-osmotic stress. Aneuploid cells i.e., cells with an abnormal number of chromosomes, have proteome imbalance which results in the influx of water due to an osmotic pressure difference between the cytoplasm and extracellular environment. Consequently, aneuploid cells become much larger and stiffer than normal cells. While it is well-established that the clearance of apoptotic cells is carried out by immune cells, the mechanism of their removal during early embryogenesis had remain unexplored. Verena Ruprecht’s (Centre for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona, Spain) research revealed an unexpected role of epithelial cells as “phagocytes” that scavenge apoptotic cells during vertebrate embryogenesis, using specialized structures: phagocytic cups and epithelial arms. Tissue homeostasis and development require clearance of dead or unwanted cells as well as repairing of injured tissues. Yalan Mao (University College London, UK) discussed the multiple ways tissues employ to heal wounds, such as tissue fluidity and an altered 3D cell shape. Jochen Guck (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Germany) reported a high-throughput method for screening the mechanical properties of blood cells such as cell size and stiffness, using a microfluidic device, which could be used for the prognosis or the analysis of the phenotypic consequence of diseases such as Covid-19 and cancer.
Besides the intensive scientific talks and discussions, there was a relaxed and calming musical night entertaining all the participants.
I enjoyed all aspects of the meeting, including talks, coffee break discussions, poster sessions, and the food. I would like to thank all the organizers (Alba Diz-Muñoz (EMBL Heidelberg, Germany), Carl-Philipp Heisenberg (Institute of Science And Technology, Austria), Prisca Liberali (Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Switzerland), Anđela Šarić (University College London, UK), Xavier Trepat (Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, Spain) for organizing an excellent meeting covering various aspects of mechanobiology in multiple contexts, from molecular to organism level. Also, I would like to acknowledge Nathalie, the coordination officer, who answered everyone’s queries very patiently before, during, and after the meeting, and made the entire conference run smoothly without any technical glitches.
Nathalie Sneider, Conference coordinator, standing in front of the conference hall
I look forward to more such meetings in the future and would like to recommend this meeting to anyone who would like to pursue their research or is currently working in the field of mechanobiology.
Staff Scientist, University of Chicago, United States.
Charles Darwin, Primo Levi, Rachel Carson, John MacPhee, Ed Yong, Carl Sagan, and Lewis Thomas have all written creatively and eloquently about the natural world and the practice of doing science. In so doing they have changed the way people think about our world, and about scientists.
This past June, The Company of Biologists ran a Workshop called “Creative Science Writing.” The group numbered a dozen mentors (published writers of scientific non-fiction, fiction, and poetry—some full-time writers, many others holding academic positions) and about fifteen mentees (lab techs, recent PhDs, post-docs, professors, staff scientists, freelance writers and journalists, and a playwright, among others).
After we’d found our rooms in the historic Wiston House (I was told mine were in a converted brewery), we gathered in the large conference room with its long, U-shaped table, carrying in name-cards to display in front of us. A microphone sat at each place, making it feel a bit like a small United Nations. We went round the U introducing ourselves by means of an object of special meaning we’d been asked to bring. Those who’d gotten the memo after already being en route to the Workshop admirably evoked such objects by words alone. Already we were telling stories, and it was notable the extent to which people shared quite personal ones right at the outset. This set the tone for the Workshop, which continued in that vein throughout.
Kat Arney, science writer and broadcaster, started off our discussion of Narrative with the observation, “Stuff has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and not everyone does that.” We then had a fair bit of discussion of peoples’ practices of outlining work in detail vs. seat-of-the-pants composition, primarily related to non-fiction books. Matthew Cobb, professor of Zoology and writer of non-fiction books, concluded, “No plan survives first engagement with the enemy.” Our resident playwright, Raegan Payne, describing what not to tell, offered the tag, “Come in late and leave early.”
During the Workshop, we broke into smaller groups to discuss pre-distributed published essays and writing submitted by mentees. We also had blocks of time to write or revise. Interspersed with this full schedule were delicious meals prepared by the world-class chefs of Wiston House, tea breaks, and evening drinks and conversation. We were free to wander the extensive and beautiful grounds of Wiston House and held many of our small-group discussions out of doors. The rotating sets of small groups made it easy to get to know one another quickly, with the scale of the meeting making it easy to interact with everyone in the end whilst promoting a very pleasant and collegial atmosphere.
We were lucky to get to talk by zoom to the writer of one of the published pieces, Karen Joy Fowler, and she gave us a lot of insight into her individual writing process. She ended with a cautionary note to the mentees, who were about to hear feedback on their own writing: Never change what you’ve written based on someone else’s critique, unless you fully believe it will get you closer to your intentions.
That being said, the feedback sessions on our submitted pieces were quite supportive as well as offering detailed suggestions and thoughtful critiques. The diversity of writing styles and structures was impressive, and we learned a good deal from one another. One of the most unexpected lessons I took away from the Workshop was that an essential ingredient for a piece that worked is emotional openness and honesty, and a great many pieces displayed that virtue.
Although the majority of attendees had come to work on their non-fiction writing skills, by the end of the Workshop many had become enthusiastic about incorporating more elements from storytelling and fiction into their narratives, or had even decided to try their hands at fiction or poetry.
One of the organizers, Enrico Coen, professor and writer, summed up the Workshop thusly: “My conclusion is that everyone here is slightly barmy.” He added that this will be a great comfort to him as he returns to his peers in the scientific world, knowing that he has all of us as a community. Many of the attendees shared this feeling of having gained a sense of kinship with this group of science writers of all spots and stripes.
For this month’s SciArt profile, we caught up with Bob Goldstein, a professor at UNC Chapel Hill, who uses various printmaking techniques to produce unique posters advertising scientists’ talks, as well as other art that is shown in galleries and held by permanent collections including New York’s Poster House museum.
Where are you originally from and what do you work on now?
I was born in suburban New York, and trained in Texas, England, and California before starting my job in North Carolina. I run a lab where people use C. elegans to discover fundamental mechanisms in cell and developmental biology, plus we’re developing tardigrades as an emerging model system to study a few different things.
Dan Rokhsar Gig poster
Were you always going to be a scientist?
No – I confess that I didn’t really know what scientists did until late in college, when I took a course that focused on experiments. Before then, I had viewed science cynically as just a giant mountain of facts. It was during the course that I realized that science involved creative people devising clever solutions to answer fascinating questions. I was an instant convert, although it took about two years of grad school before I developed the skills and discipline to make any experiments work. I considered a lot of other careers during those two years.
Gig poster – Elke Ober, MBL Woods Hole
And what about art – have you always enjoyed it?
I’ve long enjoyed going to see art and making things with my hands. Parenting meant making things often – both of my kids are very creative, and when they were young, they loved making things that we did not know how to make. We did that just about every weekend. As they grew up and developed other interests, I kept making things on weekends. It took me a while to call any of it art. Like lots of people who make art, I have constructive urges, and acting on them can feel cathartic to me, much as I expect it feels for people who act on destructive urges.
Photogravure diptych inspired by Rita Levi-Montalcini. Photo credit: Lindsay Metivier
What or who are your most important artistic influences?
When I began screen printing, artists who made gig posters for bands were influences. Now I co-teach an unusual course with an Art professor, Beth Grabowski, who literally wrote the book (or a book) on printmaking, together with Duke University Art professor Bill Fick. They’ve been strong influences, along with other local printmakers that form a friendly and interactive community. And these days I think a lot about the old Italian poster artist Leonetto Cappiello, printmaker Delita Martin, and lots of people who make subversive public art.
Lino cut print – Drosophila
How do you make your art?
I use mostly screen printing, which involves using a squeegee to push ink onto paper through complex stencils supported by a fabric mesh. And I use other printmaking techniques – woodcut, linoleum cut, photogravure, intaglio – by standard and experimental methods, along with a little drawing and painting.
Still from the movie ‘Emergency’
Does your art influence your science at all, or are they separate worlds?
More and more I see ways that art influences my science, mostly in how I look at microscopy images and videos – and what I notice in them. And the converse is frequent: Science often influences my art. For years I’ve made gig posters for scientists’ talks. About two dozen of them just appeared in scenes of a movie called Emergency. And I’ve used Python programming to develop new ways for me to convert photos and drawings into patterns of dots that I can screen print.
Working with students, screen printing art onto windows of UNC’s Genome Science Building
What are you thinking of working on next?
I keep a long list of ideas in the Notes app on my iPhone, which helps me compartmentalise: I make art on weekends, and I set aside art ideas during the week when I’m focused on science. Only the Notes app knows what’s up next!
Thanks to Bob and all the other SciArtists we have featured so far. You can find the full list here. We’re always on the lookout for new people to feature in this series – whatever kind of art you do, from sculpture to embroidery to music to drawing, if you want to share it with the community just email thenode@biologists.com (nominations are also welcome!)
“Pay more attention to your hands, because not only can they perform microscopic miracles, they can also tell you who you were before you were even born”
Dr Sally Le Page
In the latest episode of the Genetics Unzipped podcast, we’re looking at the stories at your fingertips. Presenter, Dr Sally Le Page, uncovers how excrement espionage could bring down a superpower, and unearths a 100 year old family secret. But it’s not just genetic fingerprinting we’re interested in. We also grasp the genetics of fingerprints, and what they tell us about our early life in the womb.
If you enjoy the show, please do rate and review on Apple podcasts and help to spread the word on social media. And you can always send feedback and suggestions for future episodes and guests to podcast@geneticsunzipped.com Follow us on Twitter – @geneticsunzip
On June 8th 2022, a paper titled “Trunk Neural Crest Migratory Position and Asymmetric Division Predict Terminal Differentiation” was published on Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. This is the second paper published by this research group on the topic of zebrafish trunk neural crest cell (NCC) migration in the past three months. Prior knowledge of their previous publication (Alhashem et al., 2022) is not required to understand or interpret this paper; however, I would like to prepare you with some general knowledge regarding the topic of neural crest migration/differentiation studied in this paper and mention a few key relevant findings from the previous paper.
NCC are an embryonic progenitor cell population that gives rise to numerous cell types and tissues in vertebrates. Pre-migratory NCC delaminate from the neural tube via epithelial to mesenchymal transition, following which NCC migrate throughout the embryo and undergo differentiation. NCC in the embryo trunk regions give rise to melanocytes, neurons and glia including Schwann cells and chromaffin cells. Migratory NCC streams consist of leader cells and follower cells. Leader cells initiate movement and remain at the front of the migratory NCC population to provide signals for the directionality of the population. Follower cells track leader cells’ movement and maintain cell-cell interactions necessary for migration.
Figure 1. Schematic dorsal view of a chicken embryo and cross-sectional view of NCC delamination and migration. Adapted from Simões-Costa and Bronner, 2015.
In Alhashem et al., 2022, researchers show that
In each body segment, a single progenitor undergoes an asymmetric cell division to form a larger daughter cell, which later becomes a leader cell, and a smaller daughter cell, which migrates as a follower cell. The other progenitors undergo symmetric cell divisions to give rise to two follower cells.
Leader and follower cells progress asynchronously through cell cycle during early migration: leader cells divide during migration at neural tube/notochord boundaries, but follower cells divide prior to migration initiation in the most dorsal region of somites.
The total length of cell cycle is similar between leaders and followers during migration (no significant differences). However, leaders initiate migration during S phase, but followers initiate migration during G1 phase. Moreover, leader cells remain longer in S phase while followers spend longer periods of time in G1 phase in each cell cycle.
Cell cycle progression is required for trunk NCC migration in zebrafish and is regulated by Notch signaling.
In the most recently published paper, researchers focus on later phases of trunk NCC migration when differentiation starts to occur. During migration, follower and leader cells maintain their relative positions within the migration chain. As a result, the position of migratory NCCs within a migratory chain correlates with their fates. When reaching the end of migration, leader cells divide perpendicular to the migration plane and give rise to a distal and proximal daughter cell. The distal cell remains at the most ventral position of the chain (lateral to the dorsal aorta) and differentiates to form the Sympathetic Chain Ganglia (SCG). The proximal cell stays dorsal to the SCG area and differentiates into Schwann cells. Interestingly, leader cell division is asymmetric so that the distal cell is bigger than the proximal cell sibling. On the other hand, followers divide parallel to the migration direction and their progenies populate the dorsal root ganglia (adjacent to the neural tube). In contrast to leaders, follower cell division is symmetrical generating two cells of similar sizes. Although it is beyond the scope of this study to address the mechanism regulating the pattern of cell division in leaders versus followers, it is discussed that an asymmetric distribution of Notch signaling in daughter cells after leader cell division could control identity allocation.
Another interesting observation demonstrated in the paper is that leader cells already express phox2bb, a noradrenergic marker, during migration (prior to reaching the destination for neuronal differentiation). This data suggests an early activation of transcriptional programs associated with lineage restriction in migratory NCC. How and when migratory NCCs become fate restricted has always been a major question in the field. The authors believe that this data supports the cyclical fate restriction model (Kelsh et al., 2021), which proposes that NCC can move between unstable sub-states biased towards specific differentiation outcomes. The transient differentiation biases can be determined by the expression of key fate determination receptors, the activity of the determination receptors, local environmental cues, and etc. Another recently published review paper also addresses and summarizes theories of NCC fate determination from existing single cell transcriptomics and multi-omics data (Erickson et al., 2022). It is worth a read if you would like to have a more up-to-date comprehensive view of this topic.
I personally enjoyed reading this paper because it demonstrates a strong link between two essential cellular activities: proliferation and differentiation. Cell division is so prominent during development that sometimes we don’t consider its possible interactions with other cellular processes. I also think most figures did a good job of illustrating the key points described in the texts. I especially like figure 4 and the 3D rendering that they did to show symmetric versus asymmetric division. It is a short and straightforward paper, but it leaves many intriguing topics to discuss and think about.
Read on for our news roundup of the past two weeks, with an emphasis on what has caught our eyes on twitter.
Conference news
With summer hitting the northern hemisphere, conference season is in full swing with a mixture of hybrid and in-person offerings. In the past couple of weeks #ISSCR2022, #IZFC2022 and #ICAR2022 have taken place, as well as numerous smaller focussed meetings. The famous embryology course is taking place at Woods Hole #Embryo22 and the newer #OceanDevBio course has just finished (check back on the Node for some course reports!). Still to come next month is the massive #2022SDB#EvoDevo2022 meeting in Vancouver.
Often people come back from meetings excited about the science they have heard and the people they have met, but networking can be difficult especially if you are new to ‘conferencing’ or branching out into a new field. The tweets and article below recognise that this can be difficult, whilst offering some top tips!
Scientific conferences can be isolating! There are a few things that can help. If you don’t really know anyone, follow people and interact with them on Twitter, invite folks to your talks/poster, engage at other people’s posters, volunteer for service, and come back next year! 1/ https://t.co/Ler0MndL9y
This – I gladly pass on my conference T-shirt, bag, printed abstract book, et al. for having everyone attending do rapid tests to keep everyone safe.#conferences#WearAMaskhttps://t.co/ezoNvbCpIB
Every fly geneticist fantasises of, just once, reviewing a grant about human biology & getting to make the comment "this is all fine & well, but it's unclear to this reviewer if the work proposed in this grant is relevant to, or will enhance our knowledge of, Drosophila biology".
I remember breaking down to my Ph.D. advisor about how stupid I felt while troubleshooting a problem in my project when she handed me this paper. Years later it is still relevant to young students starting off in Science. It's ok to feel stupid, we all do on a regular basis. pic.twitter.com/FZAxfJcRJm
If you would like to write for the Node, check out our recent list of writing ideas. If you would like to contribute to our ‘Developing news’ blog, please get in touch at thenode@biologists.com
The deadline for proposals to organise a Workshop with The Company of Biologists in 2024 is fast approaching. Our Workshops aim to bring together world-leading experts and early-career researchers to discuss cutting-edge science on topics not covered by traditional conferences. This means that our Workshops are focussed on emerging or cross-disciplinary themes. In 2022, our developmental biology and stem cell focussed Workshops include:
The Biology and Physics of Left-Right Patterning
Fostering Quantitative Modelling and Experimentation in Developmental Biology
Cell State Transitions: Approaches, Experimental Systems and Models
From Physics to Function
Developmental Metabolism and the Origins of Health and Disease
The Company of Biologists will handle the logistics and provide you with funding for your Workshop, allowing you to focus on the science. We are happy to receive applications for novel proposals that sit anywhere within the broad scope of biological and biomedical research. For more details, check out our post on reasons to organise a Workshop with The Company of Biologists.
In 2024, we are aiming to diversify our Workshop programme, and with this in mind, one of our Workshops is reserved for proposals from Global South countries. Furthermore, the event will be hosted overseas to encourage local early-career researchers to apply for funded places.
You can find out more and submit your proposal here.
“The notion that you can use blood tests that look at circulating DNA to understand whether people do or don’t have cancer and how they’re likely to do will totally transform cancer care. I’m quite confident of that”
Sir Harpal Kumar, President of GRAIL Europe
In the latest episode of the Genetics Unzipped podcast, we’re taking a closer look at the red stuff, finding out what a few millilitres of blood can reveal about the development, progression and treatment of cancer within the body. Rather than painful surgical biopsies, expensive scans or complicated screening tests, what if we could simply take a small tube of blood and discover a wealth of information, such as whether or not you have cancer in your body, where it started, how to treat it, and whether that treatment is actually working?
Presenter Dr Kat Arney finds out what circulating tumour DNA is from Dr Susan Galbraith, how it can be used to monitor the progression of a cancer from Professor Charles Swanton, and what this will mean for future cancer patients from Sir Harpal Kumar.
If you enjoy the show, please do rate and review on Apple podcasts and help to spread the word on social media. And you can always send feedback and suggestions for future episodes and guests to podcast@geneticsunzipped.com Follow us on Twitter – @geneticsunzip
We are currently asking for feedback on our Development presents… webinar series and invite you to complete a short survey using the button below. The survey will close on Wednesday 6 July.
During the pandemic, Development were thinking about ways in which we could support the developmental and stem cell biology communities during this period. What could the journal could offer to substitute the lack of in-person interactions with digital opportunities? We experimented by bringing some virtual elements to the eBSDB/GenSoc 2020 meeting and by the organisation of the Node 10th birthday networking event to bring scientists together in a fun and flexible way. An initial survey of the community determined that the vast majority of respondents (largely based in Europe and the Americas) would be interested in a webinar series featuring developmental biology scientific talks from a mix of early career researchers (ECRs) and principal investigators (PIs) (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Initial survey. The bar chart above shows the percentage of respondents for each of the following questions: 1) Would you be interested in a scientific webinar series with talks from developmental biologists? Yes (111/113); No (2/113). 2) Who would you prefer for us to feature? ECRs (12/111); PIs (8/111); A mix of the two (91/111). 3) In which time zone are you based? Asia/Australasia (7/113); Europe/Africa (61/113); Americas (45/113).
Aims
Highlight recent published or soon-to-be published Development articles and interesting preprints. We want to promote the authors of great Development papers, as well as to recognise the growing preprint literature and signal our support. We run the webinars monthly with a different Development Editor chairing each month. The webinars are made up of three short (12-15 minute) talks: two of the speakers are selected from Research Articles handled by the chair and the third speaker is chosen from an interesting preprint in the Editor’s field.
Promote ECRs. Along with various other initiatives in Development, we want to champion ECRs, both by promoting their science and by providing opportunities for career development. We encourage the first authors of the selected papers to present at the webinar, if possible, hoping that reflects greater diversity in career stage than only inviting the corresponding author. We hope that the webinar series provides a forum for ECRs to discuss both of these topics.
Provide a platform for informal discussions and networking in small, flexible groups. Finally, with the lack of in-person meetings at the time, we wanted to recapitulate some of the ‘chance’ in-person meetings and conversations that occur at seminars and conferences. To achieve this, all participants are invited to join an informal ‘discussion session’. We use the virtual conference platform Remo to host the webinars because, in addition to ‘meeting-wide’ presentations (similar to Zoom), Remo allows dynamic virtual interactions in small groups by allowing participants to quickly move between ‘tables’ (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. The Remo virtual conference centre for discussion sessions. While seated at one of the virtual tables an attendees speaker and microphone are only shared with others sitting at the same table. It is also quick and easy to move between tables by double-clicking on where you want to move to and you can hover over other participants’ avatars to see who is sitting where.
To keep the conversation going, we also use a dedicated Twitter hashtag (#DevPres) to allow discussion beyond the webinar platform and we deposit the recorded talks on the Node after the webinar so that people unable to attend the live session do not miss out. We host the talks on our YouTube channel and link these videos to the speakers’ preprint manuscripts on bioRxiv, if desired. Occasionally, we also share some talks on our WeChat channel to reach a wider China-based audience where YouTube can be inaccessible.
Review
Since our first webinar in October 2020, we’ve hosted 42 speakers over 14 individual sessions. Most of the webinars have been chaired by Development’s editors with the occasional ‘special’ webinar hosted by guest chairs, such as those celebrating the anniversary of preLights and Development’s zebrafish issue, as well as Development’s special issues. As we now reflect on future directions for ‘Development presents…’ it’s a good opportunity to look at the stats so far.
Speakers
In terms of speakers, we have had a relatively equal split between men and women and almost three-quarters (74%) of the speakers have been first authors, aligning with our aim to promote ECRs (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3. Webinar demographics. Pie charts showing the percentage of the 42 speakers that have been women (48%) or men (52%) and ECRs (74%) or PIs (11). Percentage of the 14 webinars scheduled for the morning UK time (i.e. Europe-Asia; 21%) or afternoon UK time (i.e. Europe-Americas; 29%).
As a UK-based journal, we organise the webinars to begin in the morning (09:00-10:00) or afternoon (i.e. 13:00-19:00) UK time (GMT/BST) so that audiences in Europe-Asia or Europe-Americas, respectively, can attend live. We are also careful to make sure that all the invited speakers (as well as the chair) are in the same or a complementary time zone. The majority (79%) of the webinars have taken place in the afternoon UK time (Europe-America accessible; Fig. 3), which partly reflects the audience from our initial survey (>90% of respondents were in Europe or the Americas; Fig. 1). The majority of speakers have been from Europe-based institutions (this is perhaps unsurprising because European speakers could attend both morning and afternoon sessions). The USA has made up the most number of speakers from a single country (Fig. 4). Moving forward, we could certainly think about how to improve the geographical diversity of our speakers to better reflect the community and our attendees.
Usually, around 100 people or more (mean 137±50) register for the webinar but this has declined towards the end of 2021. Registration was initially lower for the morning-based webinars, although there hasn’t been much difference between morning vs afternoon registration and attendance in recent months. Overall, almost two-thirds of registrants have signed in to watch the talks live (mean 61%; range 44-98%) and the results from our 2021 survey show that the majority (>60%) of attendees stay to watch all three talks (Fig. 5). Webinar scheduling and timing seemed to be the biggest factor for those that registered but did not attend live (Fig. 5) but the number of people in this category (9) is low. On average, 20% of attendees stay logged on after the talks, presumably to participate in the discussion. While this represents only a relatively small number of people, we hope that those who did stay found the opportunity to talk to the speakers and network more generally to be useful.
Fig. 5. Results from Development presents… most recent survey. Questions regarding attendance: 1) Did you attend one or more of the webinars live? Yes (47/57); No (10/57). 2) How many talks did you stay for? One (1/47); Two (16/47); Three (30/47). 3) Why did you not attend the webinar you registered for? Too busy (4/9); Timezone (3/9); Remo problems (1/9); Decided to watch the recorder (1/9).
Although we do not collect data from registrants, an email address is required to sign up for the webinars via Remo. When a country-level domain is present in the email, we can estimate where some of the ‘Development presents…’ audience is attending from (Fig. 6). Encouragingly, we have a broad representation of registrants from around the globe, which suggests that the webinars are able to reach many countries and audiences.
What is next for ‘Development presents…’? First, we would like to understand the current thoughts and requirements for these types of virtual sessions so we can best adapt as the needs of our audience change. With this in mind, we’d like to invite you to have your say by completing the survey by clicking the link below. It shouldn’t take more than 6 minutes to complete!
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