Doing great science depends on teamwork, whether this is within the lab or in collaboration with other labs. However, sometimes the resources that support our work can be overlooked. Our ‘Featured resource’ series aims to shine a light on these unsung heroes of the science world. In our latest article, we hear from Vitor Trovisco (Curator at FlyBase) and others in the team, who describe the work of FlyBase.
Overview
FlyBase (flybase.org) is the primary knowledgebase and hub for genomic, genetic and functional data on the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. FlyBase was established in 1992, following funding from the National Center for Human Genome Research of the NIH, USA [Ashburner M, 1994; The FlyBase Consortium, 1994], as an online database for information on the fruit fly’s genes and mutations that had previously been collated in the Red Book [Lindsley and Zimm, 1992], and has since accompanied the constant advances in genomics and genetics. Nowadays, FlyBase hosts a comprehensive and ever-growing collection of data curated from large scale projects to primary research publications, which include gene models, expression patterns and function, alleles and transgenic constructs, phenotypes, genetic and physical interactions, disease models, gene groups, large datasets, fly stocks and other reagents. Additionally, FlyBase hosts many linkouts to external resources, particularly those from which it draws data (e.g. UniProt, NCBI, FlyAtlas/2) and several which provide reagents and advanced research tools for fly research (e.g., fly stock centres, DNA clones, Drosophila RNAi Screening Center). Find a comprehensive list of external resources here.
People behind FlyBase
FlyBase is an international consortium of biocurators and IT developers based at Harvard University (USA), Indiana University (USA), the University of New Mexico (USA) and the University of Cambridge (UK). Harvard hosts the IT developers in charge of the database infrastructure, and the team of curators responsible for genomic features, gene models, expression patterns, disease models and physical interactions. Indiana hosts the IT developers entrusted with the website and its query tools. Cambridge hosts the team of curators in charge of genetic entities, phenotypes and genetic interactions, functional data (GO), neuronal gene expression patterns (with VFB), single cell expression data, and ontologies. The team at New Mexico contributes to general curation and physical interactions curation. For the full team, see here.
FlyBase also enjoys great support from its external scientific advisory board, which includes Drosophila researchers and representatives of other genomic databases.
Collaborations
Alliance
FlyBase is part of the Alliance of Genome Resources consortium (the Alliance), together with 5 other model organism genomics databases (Saccharomyces Genome Database, WormBase, Mouse Genome Database, the Zebrafish Information Network, Rat Genome Database) and the Gene Ontology Resource [Alliance of Genome Resources Consortium, 2022]. The Alliance aims to provide better comparative biology data and tools, by bringing together, harmonising and leveraging cross-species genetics and genomics data. As part of the Alliance, FlyBase contributes to and benefits from this improved integration to the advantage of the wider biomedical field.
Virtual Fly Brain
FlyBase is closely intertwined with Virtual Fly Brain (VFB), an interactive web-based tool for neurobiologists. VFB facilitates the study of detailed neuroanatomy, neuron connectivity and expression data of Drosophila melanogaster. VFB aims to make it easier for researchers to find relevant anatomical information and reagents. VFB is a UK-based collaboration between the University of Edinburgh, the University of Cambridge/FlyBase, the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the EMBL-EBI. FlyBase collaborates in the curation of anatomical entities and transgene expression patterns and provides the transgene expression curation displayed by VFB. In the near future VFB will also provide gene expression summaries derived from single cell data.
Single Cell Expression Atlas
The EMBL-EBI’s Single Cell Expression Atlas initiative re-analyses and standardises publicly-available single cell RNA sequencing studies to make them more comparable and easier to interpret. Through its browser, users can easily visualise clusters of cells, their annotations, and search for gene expression patterns. Our collaboration has expedited the curation of fly datasets and their integration into FlyBase, through dataset report pages and cell type scRNAseq expression summary ribbons on the gene report pages. This work is closely coordinated with Virtual Fly Brain.
Funding
Since inception, FlyBase has had the extraordinary financial support of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NHGRI/NIH, currently U41HG000739), in the form of pluri-annual grants that assure FlyBase’s core operations: continual curation of published literature, maintenance and improvement of both the database infrastructure and website. FlyBase has also benefited from grants from other sources to integrate specific new data types. Currently these come from the US’s National Science Foundation (DBI-2035515, 2039324), the UK’s Wellcome Trust (PLM13398) and the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC, BB/T014008). Additionally, the UK’s Medical Research Council has provided ongoing funding for gene function annotation since 1996 (currently MR/N030117/1). Despite its continual support, NHGRI/NIH has had to impose significant funding cuts in recent years, putting FlyBase and other model organism genomic databases under some financial strain [Bellen, 2021]. In the face of this and in order to continue providing a high standard of service, FlyBase has had to resort to crowd-funding from the Drosophila research community in the form of annual user fees. Researchers around the world have been extremely generous and their contributions have lessened the impact of the cuts.
Resource overview and highlights
Most data in FlyBase is organised into a series of report pages, corresponding to different data classes (e.g. gene, allele, aberration, dataset), each hosting different types of information. For example, the report page for a given gene displays its associated phenotypes, expression patterns, disease models, and functional data (GO) amongst other data. Each type of data is organised as annotation entries, frequently in table format.
Data are available at different scales to cater to all kinds of users, from the occasional user to the power user – see [Larkin, 2021; Gramates, 2022]. For the most frequent piecemeal use case, the ‘Quick search’ and ‘Jump-to-gene'(J2G) tools allow finding and navigating to individual report pages (see figure). For higher level data-mining there is an array of query tools to explore, such as Batch Download, QueryBuilder, CytoSearch and Feature Mapper (links under ‘Tools’ in the navigation bar). Power users can explore an array of APIs, download precomputed files with the full dataset of several classes of data, and even get hold of the whole database (links under ‘Downloads’ in the navigation bar). Below are a few recent additions.
Interactive HitLists
Most FlyBase tools retrieve their results as Interactive HitLists, or can convert them into HitLists via an “Export to HitList” option, which allow users to view, analyse and export results (see figure). For example, results can be filtered by species or data type. Selecting a single data class allows conversion between associated data types (e.g. genes to alleles) and analysing results by type (e.g. aberrations by mutagen type). Processed results can then be exported as a downloaded file, as a new HitList, or to other tools.
‘Gene groups and pathways’ report pages
These recent additions to FlyBase present sets of related genes, connected by their membership to the same signalling pathway (Pathway reports) or macromolecular complex, or by sharing a common molecular function or biological role (Gene Groups)(see figure). The assembly of these gene sets is based on their underlying GO annotations, which were systematically reviewed from a wide range of sources to ensure accuracy and findability. Gene groups are hierarchical. For example, the “ENZYMES” gene group hosts the “OXIDOREDUCTASES”, “TRANSFERASES”, “HYDROLASES”, “LYASES”, “ISOMERASES”, “LIGASES” and “TRANSLOCASES” child groups, and each of these have their own child groups. Pathway members are organised into “core” members, “positive regulators”, “negative regulators” and “ligand production” members. Gene group and pathway report pages also display GO ribbon stacks, which allow for a quick visual comparison of the group members’ function (see figure).
Experimental tools
‘Experimental tool’ data was introduced to help users find alleles and transgenes with particular characteristics. We define experimental tools as commonly used sequences with useful properties that are exploited to study the biological function of another gene product or a biological process. Examples of different types of experimental tool include those that enable a gene product to be detected (e.g. the FLAG tag, EGFP, mCherry), target a gene product somewhere specific within a cell (e.g. mitochondrial targeting sequence), drive expression in a binary system (e.g. UAS, GAL4) or are used to modify cellular activity (e.g. to inhibit/activate neurons). As new alleles and transgenes are added to the database, they are also linked to any relevant experimental tools, building up a picture of what they are made of. This allows users to easily browse and search for fly stocks with particular properties (e.g. all EGFP-tagged transgenes of their gene of interest).
User support
FlyBase is rooted in the collaborative spirit of the Drosophila research community and good communication is crucial to continue providing a high standard of service. For that, FlyBase sends a couple of surveys a year to the FlyBase Community Advisory Group, which is made up of volunteer users at any career stage, from any biology field, and at any level of expertise on the database resources. Anyone can join by following the link under ‘Community’ in the navigation bar. The surveys try to gauge the level of usage and satisfaction of certain tools and what features could be added or eliminated, and are used to inform the focus of FlyBase resource development.
The query tools and data display are designed to be intuitive, supported by clear help pages. Video tutorials and ‘Tweetorials’ are available for many tools and resources, particularly if new, revamped or heavily used (see full list here).
For more direct interactions with the community, FlyBase tries to be present at major international conferences, such as the US Annual Drosophila Research Conference and the European Drosophila Research Conference. And FlyBase always welcomes suggestions, enquiries and corrections via our
Helpmail (link at the bottom of every page). These messages are read by everyone in the team, so that they can be addressed by the most suitable people.
Help from users
The fly research community has always been extremely supportive and can continue to do so at many levels. In addition to the financial support mentioned above, it is highly important and appreciated if users cite FlyBase whenever possible in articles, presentations and funding applications (citation link at the bottom of every webpage). These acknowledgements make FlyBase’s impact on research more tangible and specifically the article citations provide metrics that can be used for funding applications.
‘Gene snapshot’ summaries
FlyBase welcomes expert researchers to contribute ’Gene Snapshot’ summaries for their favourite genes. These provide a quick overview of the function of a gene’s product, based on key points solicited by FlyBase, and are reviewed by curators.
Help from authors
Authors can also contribute in several ways to simplify the curation of their articles, ultimately allowing their data to be more quickly available on the website.
When you write your paper…
Clear, detailed and accurate descriptions of the experiments and resources minimises the curation effort and reduces the need to contact the authors. Articles should mention official FlyBase identifiers and nomenclature for entities such as genes, alleles, stocks and anatomical structures and should specify the molecular details of newly created alleles.
Once your paper is published…
When a research or review paper is published, authors should get an email from FlyBase asking for their help by filling in the Fast-Track Your Paper (FTYP) form. It requests authors to add the genes their articles focus on, which will become ready to display the next release, and minimal information on the types of experiments performed, which triages and helps prioritise the article for further curation.
Occasionally FlyBase has to send emails with clarification requests. Replying to these queries is greatly appreciated, as it allows for a more complete and accurate capture of the published data and makes it more readily available for display.
Bibliography
Alliance of Genome Resources Consortium. Harmonizing model organism data in the Alliance of Genome Resources. Genetics. 2022 Apr 4;220(4):iyac022.
Ashburner M, Drysdale R. FlyBase–the Drosophila genetic database. Development. 1994 Jul;120(7):2077-9.
Bellen HJ, Hubbard EJA, Lehmann R, Madhani HD, Solnica-Krezel L, Southard-Smith EM. Model organism databases are in jeopardy. Development. 2021 Oct 1;148(19):dev200193.
Gramates LS, Agapite J, Attrill H, Calvi BR, Crosby MA, Dos Santos G, Goodman JL, Goutte-Gattat D, Jenkins VK, Kaufman T, Larkin A, Matthews BB, Millburn G, Strelets VB. FlyBase: a guided tour of highlighted features. Genetics. 2022 Apr 4;220(4):iyac035.
Larkin A, Marygold SJ, Antonazzo G, Attrill H, Dos Santos G, Garapati PV, Goodman JL, Gramates LS, Millburn G, Strelets VB, Tabone CJ, Thurmond J; FlyBase Consortium. FlyBase: updates to the Drosophila melanogaster knowledge base. Nucleic Acids Res. 2021 Jan 8;49(D1):D899-D907.
Lindsley, Zimm. The Genome of Drosophila melanogaster. Academic Press, 1992.
Cell Worlds is an innovative project aiming to bring microscopy images out of the lab to the attention of the general public. It has received a fantastic reaction in the scientific community, and more importantly among their target audience. Cell Worlds takes the viewer on a journey into the microscopic world, while sharing information about the biology behind the beautiful images. To learn more about the background of the project we caught up with the founders of the Cell Worlds, Terence Saulnier and Renaud Pourpre, while on our sister site, FocalPlane, we focus on the microscopists that acquired the image used in Cell Worlds.
Cell Worlds documentary
In addition to the text version of our interview, we have embedded the full audio version below. We did not originally intend to release the recording, but we think that this format gives an even better insight into the enthusiasm and passion of Renaud and Terence. We apologise for some issues with the sound quality and please note that there are a couple of swear words in the recording.
Can you tell us about your background and how you got started with science communication?
Renaud – I have been interested in science since high school and have a PhD in microbiology and epigenetics. When I began my PhD, I became aware of the need to tell our stories and get our messages to people outside of science; there are so many interesting stories! I started doing science communication by myself, alongside my PhD; making some videos and some events. But after I completed my PhD in 2019, I decided that I wanted to build a career in science communication and dedicate myself to working in that space. I started by creating a podcast called ‘The lonely pipette’, with a researcher, ….. Through this, I started to work directly with scientists to help them promote their stories and their research. This was through podcasts, videos and events. At one event, I met Terence and we realised that we had some common goals, and I’ll let him tell that part of our story – how everything really began for Cell Worlds.
Terence – I’m totally in love with science, especially neuroscience. This is why I started as an engineer in neuroscience and neurobiology at the Institut Curie in France. I was spending hours on the microscope looking at fluorescence labelling in cells. I really loved looking at these images and I wanted to share this type of research with the public, with a broader audience. I think it is important to discuss what we are doing in the lab and why we are doing our research. I want to help popularise science with people who would not normally be engaged with it. I do this through conferences and videos, for example those hosted on YouTube. As Renaud mentioned, we met at an event and realised that we had a common goal to work at the interface between research and the public; this was our mission. We want to bring the image of science far from the lab and into the public domain, sharing it on the internet and via digital art.
Photo credit: @youennlerb (fb/ig)
Do you think your background as scientists is important for making you good science communicators?
Renaud – We don’t believe you have to be a scientist to do good science communication. But the good thing about being a former researcher is that we know about the everyday life of the scientists; that they often lack the time and the money to be able to share their research with the public. For Cell Worlds, since we both come from a microscopy background, we knew that scientists had gigabytes of images that were never going to leave the lab. But they have stories and they are beautiful. Because we knew this, we thought that others probably shared our frustration that these images were not being used. Between us, we realised we had a list of inspiring scientists that were already sharing their images on Twitter. When we contacted them, they all just said ‘yes, just do it, you can use our images’.
Terence – I think we are lucky to have this understanding of the lab, but we really think you can speak about science without having a big scientific background. That’s part of the story of Cell Worlds, anyone can understand and participate in science. It is truly open science and this is an important part of our mission.
Aside from the microscopy images, where did the inspiration for Cell Worlds come from?
Renaud – There are many inspirations for Cell Worlds. One thing we were clear about from the start was that we wanted to create a narration that is quite different from classical documentaries. We realised that we share a big passion for music, and we have similar tastes, for example we love electronic music, but also orchestral music, which can bring a different power to the soundtrack. This was the inspiration to pick one musician to become part of our team of three, all with complimentary skills.
Terence – Yes, the music is definitely very cool! We also recognised the role of the internet culture in connecting with the public, especially younger people. The internet has made the way that people get news and access information very different from in the past, especially with social media. For us to have a documentary was very cool, but it was important that we shared it on YouTube, where it is totally free and very easy to share on social media platforms such as Twitter.
Renaud – It brings us back to our open science goals. We produced something that is available to people for free; they can play it on YouTube, or project it somewhere. We think that it is important to make these stories accessible for the public.
Photo credit: @youennlerb (fb/ig)
One thing that struck me about the documentary was that it appealed to such a broad range of people. For example, scientists really love it, perhaps for the images and the music more than the story, whereas children want to hear/see the story as well as the dramatic images and music. Was that broad audience appeal something you were aiming for?
Terence – It’s funny, we found that the documentary took the scientists back to when they started working in science. They told us that it reminded them of why they love science and why they became biologists!
Renaud – We built the documentary to target the same audience as Terence’s YouTube channel, … as that is where we published it. So, we were aiming to connect with teenagers and young adults. But we didn’t really anticipate that younger children would be watching it, but it was amazing, and we realised that our storytelling worked for them as well. We also received messages from teachers asking us about using the documentary to introduce a lesson or showing it to their classes. Another good thing was that scientists became great ambassadors for the documentary, as they were sharing it everywhere! We were so happy to see this collective effort to disseminate it.
Can you tell us more about the exhibition?
Terence – our idea was the exhibition should be an immersive experience. We wanted the audience to be surrounded by the microscopy. The images are projected on all four walls and the floor is a mirror, so you see the reflections from the walls. Of course, it is impossible to be immersed in this world in our reality, so the exhibition creates a dream world for the scientists, the school children, and the public in general.
Renaud – We have a fun story about the exhibition to share with you. We had a small launch, helped by the CNRS, the national institute of research in France. The cool story was seeing some very senior scientists behaving like 5 year olds! Running around searching for their images and even dancing along with them! That was so cool to see, the happiness in that room!
Photo credit: @youennlerb (fb/ig)
Does the exhibition tell the same story as the documentary?
Terence – It is quite different, but the aims are the same. With the exhibition, the idea is to use the entertainment to give the message to the public. But it’s more than just entertainment, we use the beautiful music and images to raise awareness of the science. Only at the end of the exhibition, do you discover what you have been looking at. We write on the wall ‘this is a neuron’ or ‘this is an embryo’, so people now connect that the images they are seeing are actually cells inside them. The museum hosting the exhibition has never hosted any science before, so it was exciting to bring together the art and science worlds.
Can you share the ‘vital statistics’ of the documentary and exhibition?
Renaud – Our nuclear team is three, me, Terence and Youenn, who composed the music. The music is particularly important in the exhibition as there is no voiceover. This means the narrative comes from the music. For the documentary, we also had two actresses helping us with the voiceover. They coached us to use our voices for the audio, as well as adding their own voices. They also tested the script and helped us add an artistic layer to the words. Then we have all the scientists that contributed images. It’s an international team, although initially many of the team were French, with collaborations with some of the top institutes in France. We then had scientists from other institutes join the team; you can see the full list on our website.
In terms of the documentary, we have reached 14,000 views (May 2022). That happened quite quickly! We are continuing to promote the documentary, for example we will share it in a cinema soon. We are also trying to push it to festivals, to really bring it to new audiences, in new places. We really want to get those images to the public, far from the lab.
We think that our exhibition is the first project, at least on this kind of scale (including so many teams, and also in terms of the physical size of the exhibition) to bring biology to the general public in this format. That’s why we called it a world premiere! So, we wanted to know if the people attending the exhibition are seeing a science and art show for the first time. We could collect this information at the end of the exhibitions via our website, which helps connects the exhibition with the documentary. The audience scan a QR code and are taken to a survey asking them if this is their first experience of an art and science show. So far, it is about 85%. We also ask whether people are interested in learning more about the microscopic world. This is about 75%. We think these numbers mean that we are achieving our goal, to get a new audience to engage with science. We chose the art centre because we knew that their main audience are not scientists.
Photo credit: @youennlerb (fb/ig)
How did you select the scientists that became part of the project?
Both – We only had one condition, a willingness to share their images! And all the scientists that we approached were already sharing their research on social media. Often, we only ‘knew’ the researchers because we followed them on Twitter. We just approached people with images that we liked. And we also had recommendations from other scientists either because they had seen some great images, or they were suggesting a new topic for us to cover.
So, which came first the images or the story?
Renaud – It was a little of both! We knew there were some topics that we wanted to cover, and then we looked around to see if there was someone we could connect with on that area. But we also introduced some topics because of the images we had seen. It didn’t matter if we knew that subject, we were interested in sharing the message of the researcher and they know the story, so we just had to look for cool stuff to share!
Terence – So, Cell Worlds is like the theory of evolution; not to have a set plan at the start but the project is made of many different blocks that build the wall.
Where did you get funding?
Terence – The funding came from two sources. Half from the museum that is hosting the exhibition in Bassins des Lumiéres, Bordeaux. And the other half is from le Centre national du cinéma in France, which helped us make the documentary. It was enough to cover our project. We were lucky as getting funding for science popularisation can be complicated.
Renaud – The funding from the le Centre national du cinéma was a competitive process. They were looking for different types of projects in arts and culture. We made an application, trying to be as clear as possible about our vision. They liked the project and decided to support us.
Why both an exhibition and documentary?
Terence – We really think about Cell Worlds as only one project. The images are the same and much of the music is the same. But we can give you a bit of history as to how it came together.
Renaud – When we started thinking about making the documentary, we really wanted it to be an immersive experience. Actually ‘immersive’ is not quite the right word but we wanted the viewer to feel that they were projected into an ecosystem, seeing it like a jungle with all its wildlife. The microscopic world is like another ecosystem, and we help the audience to enter with the voiceover. Whilst working on the project, we were in the museum, and we thought ‘how cool would it be to have a cell that is higher than you’. So, we contacted the museum about using the space. We quickly realised that the exhibition and the documentary would be complimentary – you can enjoy either without seeing the other – but we wanted to build our audiences’ desire to see both. Whilst the images and much of the music are the same, the narrative is different because of the different ways you engage with them. For example, at the exhibition you are more on your own, and if you see if a second time you don’t see it in the same way, because you already have the answers that appear at the end of the show. The voiceover in the documentary gives you more new information. We think that having these different outputs means we can reach a broader audience, and this is one of the main aims of the project. The link between the two is the website, but this is really just to direct people to the output that they have not already seen.
Photo credit: @youennlerb (fb/ig)
What are you working on next, as a team or individuals?
Both – We want to do many things!
Terence – We want to continue to work on open science with our incubator L’Exploratoire. Cell Worlds is a part of this incubator, but we want to continue our mission to explain science to the public in new ways. Not, of course, the academic way of explaining science but allowing the citizens to be actors in science, to participate. This is not really one project but more of an ambition for what we are doing in our other projects. Renaud, maybe you can speak about our new project, ‘Méandres’, ‘Meander’ in English.
Renaud – So, Méandres is about everything being connected or aligned. The project is centred in the notion of open science. We want to connect citizens with science in ways that are not ‘boring’ and allow them to experience science rather than just receiving the information. Méandres has the same team as Cell Worlds. We wanted to keep the same team; we work well together covering science popularisation, culture and music. It just makes sense! We will be working on a completely different project and it is more based on Terence and Youenn’s expertise. It is about how we can talk about neuroscience, emotions and human neurological mechanism through reactions to lost architecture and buildings. In France, we have a lot of heritage buildings, which have fantastic stories and interesting histories. We want to use exploration of abandoned heritage to help talk about neuroscience. Putting people in unknown places raises emotions, so we can see the response and then explain it together. Urban exploration can look spectacular, with many images on the internet, but for us it is really a way to talk about social science and neuroscience. So, the idea is that we will take someone who is not use to those places, we will go with this person to visit an unknown place and observe both the place and the person’s reaction to it, their emotions. There are common emotional reactions to unknown places, especially in terms of fear responses. We would like to demystify the link between the emotions they have experienced, and the neurological mechanisms involved. So, we are talking about neuroscience as part of a shared experience. We will also have the opportunity to talk about these abandoned buildings and their past functions in society, meaning that we can preserve the memories of these places. We already have some locations in mind and we have the people to produce the first episode of the series. Then we will take different people to different places, to cover new topics.
Thanks to Terence and Renaud to talking to us about the fabulous Cell Worlds project as well as giving us a sneak-peek at their new project. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future.
“A lot of the variation in the big five personality traits is due to genetic differences and there’s suprisingly little effect of the family environment. It seems the way you’re raised doesn’t really affect those particular traits”
Kevin Mitchell, geneticist and neuroscientist
In the latest episode of the Genetics Unzipped podcast, we’re exploring genes, brains and the mind, as we ask how much of our personality is innate, and whether anything we do as adults can change who we fundamentally are. Presenter Dr Sally Le Page sits down with Kevin Mitchell, an Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin and author of the book Innate: How the wiring of our brains shapes who we are.
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
Epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) is an essential process in multiple steps of embryogenic morphogenesis and various pathological conditions. As an example, EMT is involved in gastrulation and neural crest cell (NCC) development during embryogenesis. EMT is also crucial for wound healing, tissue fibrosis and cancer progression. In addition to the cellular and molecular changes facilitating the transformation from epithelial cells into mesenchymal cells, EMT has also been associated with stemness, therapeutic resistance and tumor heterogeneity specifically in the context of malignancy. Due to the inherent differences between different species, cell types and biological contexts, there are variations within phenotypic changes and the underlying molecular mechanisms of different EMT programs.
NCC are an embryonic progenitor cell population that gives rise to numerous cell types and tissues, such as craniofacial bone and cartilage, in vertebrates. Pre-migratory NCCs delaminate from the neuroepithelium via EMT, following which NCCs migrate throughout the embryo and undergo differentiation. Currently, we have limited understanding of the EMT process that gives rise to migratory NCCs in mammals because many NCC EMT related findings in non-mammalian species have not been successfully replicated in mammalian species.
Transcriptional factor Twist1 is one of the major master regulators shown to be involved and to play an important role in EMT throughout both development and carcinoma progression. Previous studies on the role of Twist1 during mammalian NCC development using various mouse models have been thoroughly summarized and reviewed (Zhao and Trainor, 2022). In short, Twist1 null mice exhibit embryonic lethality around E11.5 associated with craniofacial defects such as malformed branchial arches and facial primordia (Chen et al.,2007; Chen and Behringer, 1995). Upon careful experimental testing, these phenotypes were believed to be caused by abnormality of NCC migration and differentiation. Consistent with these in vivo findings, mutations in Twist1 in humans lead to Saethre-Chotzen syndrome, which is characterized by craniosynostosis and cleft palate. In a recent publication “Twist1 Interacts with Beta/Delta-Catenins During Neural Tube Development and Regulates Fate Transition in Cranial Neural Crest Cells”, however, Bertol and her colleagues further depict the neuroectodermal expression profile of Twist1 during early mouse embryogenesis and illustrate potential functions of Twist1 in mouse cranial NCC delamination and EMT.
Key findings
During mouse embryogenesis between E8.5 and E9.5, Twist1 is detected in vesicle-like structures on the apical side of the neuroepithelium/neural plate. Interestingly, such apical expression of Twist1 coincides with the expression pattern of B-catenin and Claudin-1 suggesting an association of Twist1 with adherens and tight junctions in the neuroepithelium. Furthermore, a physical interaction between cytosolic Twist1 and B-catenin is demonstrated by co-immunoprecipitation. When Twist1 is deleted in whole embryos, apical B-catenin in vesicle like structures become diffused and mostly cytosolic in the apical neuroepithelial cells of the neural plate.
Consistent with other studies, Twist1 is also found to be expressed in migratory cranial NCCs at E8.5, E9.5 and E10.5. When Twist1 is conditionally deleted in cranial premigratory NCCs at early E8.5, cranial migratory NCCs are observed throughout the embryos, but there is a fewer number of migratory NCCs in the frontonasal and pharyngeal processes between E9.5 and E11.5. This observation is later confirmed by severe frontonasal prominence defects and neural tube closure abnormalities.
Examinations of remaining post-delamination migratory NCCs in neural tube explants from Twist1 conditional knockout mice reveal that the majority of migratory NCCs exhibits epithelial morphologies, significant cell-cell adhesions and continuous junctional signals of ZO1. Moreover, migratory cranial NCCs in vivo show increased E-cadherin expression, and Specc1 (an actomyosin cytoskeleton regulator) expression is reduced in the hindbrain and first pharyngeal arch. These data indicate disrupted EMT during the delamination of cranial NCCs in an absence of Twist1 expression.
To study the importance of Twist1 phosphorylation in craniofacial tissue development, the researchers have also generated four Twist1 phospho-incompetent mouse lines. Phenotypic characterizations of these mutants demonstrate that S18/20 and S68 phosphorylation sites are critical for craniofacial development.
In summary, the paper contributes a valuable collection of data to fill our knowledge gap of how NCC delamination and EMT are regulated in mammalian species. To my knowledge, this is the first publication that directly studies the role of Twist1 specifically in early NCC development via using Wnt1-Cre and Wnt1-Cre2 driven conditional knockout mouse models. Although I find some parts of the paper slightly confusing regarding the interpretation of certain data and the relevance of IRF6 data to the rest of the paper, the data itself is still very intriguing and thought-provoking. Interestingly, Zeb2 null mutant mouse embryos exhibit similar phenotypes of persistent E-cadherin expression in migratory cranial NCCs (Putte et al., 2003). Similar to Twist1, neither Snail1 or Zeb2 conditional knockout in pre-migratory NCCs completely inhibits NCC delamination and EMT (Murray and Gridley, 2006; Rogers et al., 2013). These previous findings in combination with the proposed function of Twist1 in the completion of mouse cranial NCC EMT could suggest that perhaps EMT master regulators act synergistically in waves to promote the complete transition from neuroepithelial cells to mesenchymal migratory NCCs.
A morning excursion to the local tidepools – Instructor Nat Clarke (lower right) identifying species for students and guest Dan Rokhsar (photo credit: Azalea Martinez Jaimes).
In June 2022, I had the pleasure of teaching a short course on comparative embryology with Chris Lowe and Laurent Formery at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station. Our mission: to take a mix of grad students and postdocs from disciplines across the biosciences, introduce them to diverse developmental mechanisms in a broad sampling of organisms spanning the animal tree of life, and then release them to pursue research projects of their own design.
What is the value of a course like this? And why are marine stations an ideal setting? Simply put, animal diversity showcases countless natural experiments – evolutionary experiments in diverse body plans, novel cell types, complex life history strategies, and more. Since life evolved in the ocean, the seaside environment allows unrivaled exploration of this biodiversity: where else offers ready access to embryos of 15 animal phyla within steps of the classroom?
I could, of course, describe at length what students might get out of such an experience, but instead I’ll give it to you directly from the source. Below, a few of our students, and my co-instructor, share their reflections and favorite moments from the course.
Student Perspectives:
Charlotte Brannon:
A colony of a red encrusting bryozoan growing on a shell (left; photo credit: Charlotte Brannon), with a close-up view of individuals enclosed in their ‘houses’ (center; photo credit: Lauren Lubeck). A confocal micrograph of individual zooids of another bryozoan species (right; photo credit: Joel Erberich)
There is so much biology hiding in non-model organisms, especially in the ocean, and it was enlightening to immerse myself in it during this course. Partly, this happened through tidepooling and digging for worms in mud flats. Tidepooling was surprisingly challenging at first. Our instructors could pick up a rock, identify five species on it, and tell you anything you wanted to know about any of them. Meanwhile, the most exciting thing I could find was a floating, white creature which turned out to be… a seagull feather. I ended up collecting a seemingly boring shell with some red stuff encrusted on it. Surprisingly, a quick look under the dissection scope revealed this crusty red stuff to be a Bryozoan colony! Unknowingly, I had collected a fascinating marine invertebrate. Similarly, when we later visited mud flats, a classmate and I found what seemed to us like a very average worm. We later learned that it was actually Leptosynapta albicans – the burrowing sea cucumber. I learned my lesson: when immersed in nature, you must actively try not to find something interesting.
Student Lauren Lubeck trying her hand at microinjection (left). At right, a single blastomere injection of a two-cell nudibranch embryo of the species Berghia stephanieae (photo credit: Nat Clarke)
Exposure to a wide range of marine invertebrates made me more excited about developmental biology because it highlighted how much we don’t know! I am excited about all that non-model organisms can teach us, and eager to explore the mechanics of development in a range of systems. Of course, this is easier said than done. As we learned, having the right tools to work with an organism is crucial, and sometimes that means building your own. The short timeline of the course forced us to be creative with our resources and think carefully about the appropriate tools. I also appreciated seeing multiple approaches to the same experiment. For example, our guest instructor, Brady Weissbourd, demonstrated his strategy for injecting Clytia eggs, which differed in many subtle ways from our instructors’ approach for injecting echinoderm eggs. This made me realize how important it is to tailor your experimental approaches to your organism.
Lauren Lubeck:
As a marine research station, Hopkins Marine Station is one of only a few special places where scientists can collect, observe, and perform experiments on a wide diversity of marine invertebrates. It was an incredible experience to be immersed in the marine environment at Hopkins. Unsurprisingly, almost every guest instructor wanted to spend time outside looking for their favorite organisms, and the students went tidepooling on our own many times. We learned the importance of understanding the ecology of our target species. Want choanoflagellates? Look for small, dirty looking pools. Want acoels? Turn over rocks in the sandy sections of tidepools. Want fat innkeeper worms? Look for the holes marking the entrance to their U-shaped burrows. Working where our favorite intertidal invertebrates live created a unique opportunity to learn more about them.
Circulating blood in the tunicate, Botryllus (A. Jaimes)
Nerve net of a transgenic jellyfish (N. Martinez)
A highlight for me was the connections I made with fellow students. Each student arrived with specific interests and biological questions in mind. I loved that we all found ways to investigate our favorite questions while using species that were new to us. While each of us pursued our original question, we also were spontaneously inspired by a new animal or phenomenon we encountered. For example, Nabor Vazquez Martinez usually studies aspects of the nervous system in C. elegans, but he found Brady Weissbourd’s Clytia jellyfish fascinating and decided to examine their nervous system too. Azalia Martinez Jaimes is interested in stem cell differentiation and found an interesting model in the tunicate Botryllus, which continuously builds new adults from growing buds filled with stem cells.
A child observing Chrysaora sea nettles in the jellies exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (photo credit: Nat Clarke)
The “Behind the Pipes” tour of the Monterey Bay Aquarium was another highlight. As we were led through the ctenophore facility by Senior Aquarist Wyatt Patry, I learned that they grow the same algae we were feeding our larvae in class, but I was amazed by the massive scale of production. Once we entered the main exhibit to see the ctenophores and cnidarians on display, I was overcome with a combination of awe and excitement. It was moving to see how our research interests meshed with the education and outreach of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
A. S. Jijumon:
“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous” — This is a quote from Aristotle that I saw at the Monterey Bay Aquarium during our class visit. In this course, I realized that there is much to learn and explore in marine organisms, and that it can be more straightforward to make novel and important observations in unexplored areas.
Sea cucumber ossicles (photo credit: Charlotte Brannon). DIC image and a confocal micrograph of a sea cucumber larva, DAPI (blue), tubulin (green), phalloidin (red) (photo credit: AS Jijumon).
I did my undergraduate education in India, and what I studied in my developmental biology classes were mostly theories and text book images. Through this course, for the first time, I got a practical demonstration of the developmental stages of multiple marine invertebrates and observed their morphogenesis over time. I got a chance to really experience the origin of classical experiments in embryology and developmental biology. Observing the wide diversity of organisms we could collect straight from tidepools, and then performing wet lab experiments on these creatures using microscopy and molecular tools was a fantastic experience.
Image of a sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus) egg during fertilization (photo credit: AS Jijumon).
My favorite observation was with the sand dollars (Dendraster excentricus) we worked with on our first day. We collected eggs and sperm by injecting KCl into their gonads. Subsequently, I added diluted sperm onto an egg and watched on the microscope. That was the first time I witnessed the event of fertilization occur in real life, and I felt goosebumps and got the impression that I acquired the power to manipulate life, which was a memorable moment. I would like to share this experience with other science enthusiasts in the future.
Instructor perspective – Laurent Formery:
Confocal micrograph of a nudibranch, Corambe sp. DAPI (cyan), phalloidin (yellow) and WGA (pink). (Photo credit: Joel Erberich)
This course was one of my first teaching experiences, and it was an awesome one. We wanted to promote exploration and experimentation using the incredible resource that we had right outside the classroom – the ocean. From tidepools, mudflats and plankton nets we collected species spanning over a dozen animal phyla (and some of our closest unicellular relatives, too), and we spawned, observed and manipulated them in the classroom. The combinations of the students’ unique skill sets and the array of animals that we collected generated a profusion of discovery – applying well-developed techniques to new questions in new species. During this process I personally learned much more than what I could teach to the students, making this course an enriching experience for me as well. The main message of the course we tried to emphasize was the astonishing diversity of biochemical processes, developmental mechanisms, and ecological strategies waiting to be discovered and documented right there in the ocean. This underscores the importance of protecting the endangered biodiversity of our coastlines, but also the value of supporting basic exploratory research outside the handful of classical biological model systems. One of my favorite examples highlighting the importance of exploring non-model systems was brilliantly told by Dan Rokhsar during his genomics lecture to the class. The recent chromosome mapping of non-model species such as the scallop Patinopecten yessoensis and the jellyfish Rhopilema esculentum enabled the discovery of a fundamental feature of animal evolution: the arrangement of genes on chromosomes (referred to as synteny) is highly conserved and can be traced back to the roots of metazoans (Simakov et al., 2022). The few exceptions to that rule, in which macrosynteny has undergone independent and major reorganization events, are curiously distributed among the metazoan tree: they include the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, and the entire vertebrate clade.
Acknowledgements: A course like this simply cannot run without the support of a team of deeply invested staff and instructors. We want to give a special “thank you!,” to the staff at Hopkins, and to all of our guest instructors – Dan Rokhsar, David Booth, Flora Rutaganira, Christina Zakas, Bo Wang, Brady Weissbourd, Ryan York, Wyatt Patry, Deidre Lyons, Jessica Goodheart, Dominique Bergmann – for making this year’s course a success. We also thank the departments of Biology, Developmental Biology, and BioEngineering, at Stanford for financial support, and Molecular Instruments and Luxendo for generously providing equipment and reagents for the course.
Confocal micrograph of a market squid, Loligo opalescens, stained with DAPI (grey) and HCR probes for sodium channel (yellow) and gluatamate receptor (magenta). (Photo credit: Nat Clarke)
CITED2 IS A CONSERVED REGULATOR OF DEEP HEMOCHORIAL PLACENTATION Marija Kuna, Pramod Dhakal, Khursheed Iqbal, Esteban M. Dominguez, Lindsey N. Kent, Masanaga Muto, Ayelen Moreno-Irusta, Keisuke Kozai, Kaela M. Varberg, Hiroaki Okae, Takahiro Arima, Henry M. Sucov, Michael J. Soares
AKT1-FOXO4 AXIS REGULATES HEMOCHORIAL PLACENTATION Keisuke Kozai, Ayelen Moreno-Irusta, Khursheed Iqbal, Mae-Lan Winchester, Regan L. Scott, Mikaela E. Simon, Masanaga Muto, Marc R. Parrish, Michael J. Soares
Visuomotor anomalies in achiasmatic mice expressing a transfer-defective Vax1 mutant Kwang Wook Min, Namsuk Kim, Jae Hoon Lee, Younghoon Sung, Museong Kim, Eun Jung Lee, Jong-Myeong Kim, Jae-Hyun Kim, Jaeyoung Lee, Wonjin Cho, Jee Myung Yang, Nury Kim, Jaehoon Kim, C. Justin Lee, Young-Gyun Park, Seung-Hee Lee, Han-Woong Lee, Jin Woo Kim
A Development-Inspired Niche for Homeostatic Human Mini-Intestines Charlie J. Childs, Emily M. Holloway, Caden W. Sweet, Yu-Hwai Tsai, Angeline Wu, Joshua H. Wu, Oscar Pellón Cardenas, Meghan M. Capeling, Madeline Eiken, Rachel Zwick, Brisa Palikuqi, Coralie Trentesaux, Charles Zhang, Ian Glass, Claudia Loebel, Qianhui Yu, J. Gray Camp, Jonathan Z. Sexton, Ophir Klein, Michael P. Verzi, Jason R. Spence
Reconstituting human somitogenesis in vitro Yoshihiro Yamanaka, Kumiko Yoshioka-Kobayashi, Sofiane Hamidi, Sirajam Munira, Kazunori Sunadome, Yi Zhang, Yuzuru Kurokawa, Ai Mieda, Jamie L. Thompson, Janet Kerwin, Steven Lisgo, Takuya Yamamoto, Naomi Moris, Alfonso Martinez-Arias, Taro Tsujimura, Cantas Alev
Reconstructing human Brown Fat developmental trajectory in vitro Jyoti Rao, Jerome Chal, Fabio Marchianò, Chih-Hao Wang, Ziad Al Tanoury, Svetlana Gapon, Yannis Djeffal, Alicia Mayeuf-Louchart, Ian Glass, Elizabeth M. Sefton, Bianca Habermann, Gabrielle Kardon, Fiona M. Watt, Yu-Hua Tseng, Olivier Pourquié
Generation of functional hepatocytes by forward programming with nuclear receptors Rute A. Tomaz, Ekaterini D. Zacharis, Fabian Bachinger, Annabelle Wurmser, Daniel Yamamoto, Sandra Petrus-Reurer, Carola M. Morell, Dominika Dziedzicka, Brandon T. Wesley, Imbisaat Geti, Charis-Patricia Segeritz, Miguel Cardoso de Brito, Mariya Chhatriwala, Daniel Ortmann, Kourosh Saeb-Parsy, Ludovic Vallier
New Hydra genomes reveal conserved principles of hydrozoan transcriptional regulation Jack F. Cazet, Stefan Siebert, Hannah Morris Little, Philip Bertemes, Abby S. Primack, Peter Ladurner, Matthias Achrainer, Mark T. Fredriksen, R. Travis Moreland, Sumeeta Singh, Suiyuan Zhang, Tyra G. Wolfsberg, Christine E. Schnitzler, Andreas D. Baxevanis, Oleg Simakov, Bert Hobmayer, Celina E. Juliano
Ten Simple Rules for Using Public Data for Your Research Vishal Oza , Jordan Whitlock , Elizabeth Wilk , Angelina Uno-Antonison , Brandon Wilk , Manavalan Gajapathy , Timothy Howton , Austyn Trull , Lara Ianov , Elizabeth Worthey , Brittany Lasseigne
8 July 2022 sees the full launch of Microscopya, a video game that takes its player inside the wonderfully complex world of the cell. One of the creators of Microscopya is Beata Mierzwa, who we heard from in one of the earliest SciArt features on the Node. You can read more about the game, its aims and its creators in the press release posted on FocalPlane.
Having tried the game with my family, I can confirm that it appeals to all ages with its beautiful visuals and soundtrack. Whilst younger children might not pick up on all the details (we had a dinner table conversation about a ‘metrotron’ being the powerhouse of the cell!), they loved the microtubule roads and playing the games to win trophies.
You can find out more about Microscopya in the following places:
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.
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