Daisy Vinter (PhD Student, Ashe lab, University of Manchester) ‘Dynamics of hunchback translation in real time and at single mRNA resolution in the Drosophila embryo’
Ping Wu (Associate Professor, Chuong lab, University of Southern California) ‘Cyclic growth of dermal papilla and regeneration of follicular mesenchymal components during feather cycling’
Yan Gong and Dominique Bergmann (Bergmann lab, Stanford University) ‘The Arabidopsis stomatal polarity protein BASL mediates distinct processes before and after cell division to coordinate cell size and fate asymmetries’
The webinar will be held in Remo, our browser-based conferencing platform. After the talks you’ll have the chance to meet the speakers and other participants at virtual conference tables. If you can’t make it on the day, talks will be available to watch after the event on the Node. You can also sign up to our mailing list for email alerts.
Our eleventh SciArt profile of the series features Ayelén Valko, a postdoc in Sebastian Schuck’s lab at Heidelberg University
Ayelén with two of her artworks that describe the autophagy process from different perspectives and magnifications
Where are you originally from and what do you work on now?
I am originally from Argentina, where I studied Biology at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). During my PhD I explored the molecular mechanisms that trigger starvation-induced macro-autophagy in the fruit fly, Drosophilamelanogaster. This is a physiological process by which cells digest their own cellular material in an attempt to compensate for nutrient deprivation. Later on, I became interested in studying a different kind of autophagic degradation, called micro-ER-phagy, by which the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is eliminated during ER stress, and for which the underlying mechanisms are not completely understood. With this aim I joined Dr Sebastian Schuck’s laboratory at Heidelberg University one year ago, as a postdoctoral fellow, where I am using budding yeast as a model organism to tackle this issue.
Oil on canvas depicting the autophagy process induced by starvation in fat body cells from Drosophila. The painting, made during my PhD, was inspired by fluorescence confocal microscopy images. Red and green colours are used to represent fluorescent autophagic markers. The black areas within each cell represent lipid droplets, and the nuclei appear in blue as if they were DAPI-stained. This artwork was selected as a cover image in the Autophagy Journal.
Were you always going to be a scientist?
Definitely yes! According to my family, when I was 5 or 6 years old I used to spend hours in the garden observing insects and plants, and drawing them on notebooks. At around 10, my dad gave me a small microscope, an old and very simple device that belonged to him, which I used to look at water samples and fragments of leaves. I remember my excitement seeing for the first time this amazing tiny world through the lens of this enigmatic artefact. That was when I knew that I wanted to hold to that feeling and keep exploring that microscopic universe.
Oil on canvas that represents the autophagy process with a higher level of magnification than the previous painting. The painting was made using a grayscale of tones as if the tissue was seen through a transmission electron microscope.
And what about art – have you always enjoyed it?
For me art has always been as important as science. It was also during my childhood that I became interested in depicting human faces, as I thought that by doing so I would be able to catch the essence of each of my family members on paper. Later on, as an adult, I started to see art as a useful way of conveying my appreciation of life and nature, and share with the general audience the beauty hidden inside a cell, which my work as a scientist allows me to grab. To do so, in parallel to my scientific training, I took several art courses at the National University of Art in Argentina. After having been trained in different art techniques, I specialized in scientific and naturalistic illustration. My works have been exhibited in several galleries and museums back in Argentina, among them the Quinquela Martín Museum and the Rómulo Raggio Foundation in Buenos Aires. I have also described two of these scientific paintings in a commentary article for the Autophagy journal.
Artistic interpretation of autophagy. The vesicles represented here are inspired by autophagosomes (double line delimiting the structure) and autolysosomes (single line) of fat body cells of Drosophila. I made this painting using a mixed technique that combines watercolours, acrylics, Indian inks, and collage. Cover image for Volume 16, Issue 1 of Autophagy
What or who are your most important artistic influences?
The main inspiration for my scientific artwork comes from my own photographs of cells and tissues that I need to take for my scientific work. The complexity of these subcellular worlds and their biological processes are constantly feeding my imagination. In fact, I am motivated not only by their mystery and beauty but also by the fact that this magnificent cellular universe remains veiled to the general public. Thus, my main aim is to create attractive paintings that can appeal to the general public, as an instrument of enjoyment and popularisation of science. But, obviously, not only cells inspire me. There are a large number of artists, that belong to very different artistic traditions, whose work has affected me deeply. I feel very moved by the incredible representation of hell and heaven by Hieronymus Bosch, the monochromatic landscapes depicting alien universes by H. R. Giger, Remedios Varo’s surrealist paintings with alchemic creatures, and many other exponents of the Surrealist movement such as Salvador Dali and Joan Miró, just to name a few.
“My main aim is to create attractive paintings that can appeal to the general public, as an instrument of enjoyment and popularisation of science.”
‘Imaginary autolysosome’. The painting shows an artistic interpretation of a chimerical autolysosome, summarising different selective and non-selective autophagic processes in the same vesicle. Elements inside this vesicle could come from virophagy, reticulophagy, mitophagy, lipophagy, and general non-selective autophagy. The artwork was made employing a mixed technique that involves watercolours, Indian inks, markers, and digital integration. Cover image for Volume 16, Issue 12 of Autophagy
How do you make your art?
The challenge of making art based on scientific images lays in the need to represent the elements of study using artistic resources without completely losing the rigor of scientific observations. For me, this means that subcellular elements should be recognisable in the final artwork. However, my paintings are not in any way copies of photographs, but instead are the product of a creative process inspired by my observations and planned carefully. The first step of this process is sketching the original idea, ordering the elements of the composition harmoniously and attractively. It is only then that I decide the best technique for the work, as well as the kind of support in which I am going to make the artwork. I usually employ oil colours, acrylics, watercolours, Indian ink, collage, or a combination of them. As for the support, I usually employ canvas, a particular type of paper or cardboard.
The painting illustrates the micro-ER-phagy process, which I am currently studying. The main structure represents ER whorls that are being incorporated by the vacuole. The artwork was made using a mixed technique that combines watercolours, acrylics, Indian inks, and collage
Does your art influence your science at all, or are they separate worlds?
Art can influence science for sure! I think both activities are connected in deeply synergistic ways. In general, to understand a new idea or fact, normally we have the intuitive tendency to draw it. It is often considered that our understanding of a particular subject can increase by the act of trying to put what we are learning on paper, and for this, of course, science is no exception. To represent a scientific phenomenon, either artistically or schematically, one needs to develop a high level of comprehension of the fact. I have found that by drawing outlines of the experimental designs and the expected results, I usually can visualize better the biological questions that I am trying to answer. And this practice has often led me to new ideas for future paintings. Thus, my artistic and scientific lives nurture each other, giving me a unique point of view that ended up being essential for my scientific and artistic projects.
Parallelism between two different biological cycles: the Drosophila life cycle and the Krebs cycle. I made this painting with Indian inks and digital integration of individual drawings. It was used to illustrate a Doctoral Thesis
What are you thinking of working on next?
Apart from two cover images for different scientific journals on which I am currently working, and some other art projects, I am planning to study which are the elements or features that generate a stimulating and intriguing scientific artwork. My feeling is that the general audience is not as enthused by scientific art as it is by the rest of figurative art. To address this issue, I plan to systematically analyse people’s responses to a collection of slightly different cellular paintings, in order to identify which elements can maximise the identification of the viewer with the artwork. In line with this, I also want to explore interdisciplinary approaches to divulge science. I would like to work with professionals from other disciplines, such as psychologists, graphic designers, and physicians, to study different ways to convey to the general public scientific knowledge through art.
Artistic interpretation of the Drosophila lymph gland, the larval hematopoietic organ. In the background, a whole field of larvae is depicted, using a mixed technique involving watercolours, Indian inks, markers, and digital integration. A version of this painting was selected as a cover image for Volume 462, Issue 1 of Developmental Biology
We’re looking 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!)
Sophie Karolczak, Dowling Lab, Genetics and Genome Biology, Hospital for Sick Children, Canada
As a graduate student who started my program during the Covid-19 pandemic, I have never attended an in-person conference. I have heard stories of the serendipitous connections during social hours that turn into amazing future collaborations, and the opportunities to visit new places, both domestic and abroad. However, this has not been my reality in the conferences I have attended thus far. I have been sitting in my living room in Toronto, often in a different time zone than the conference, hoping that my Wifi will stay connected long enough to hear a talk!
While being in an actual conference hall with other people sounds quite appealing, I had a really enjoyable time overall attending the Developmental Disorders: From Mechanism to Treatment conference virtually. Allowing speakers to pre-record their talks made the flow really seamless, and for the most part prevented the technological hiccups that we have grown so accustomed to in this day and age. I appreciated the opportunity to chat with the speakers after each round of talks, and the Remo platform allowed for easy hopping from table to table if there were a few people I hoped to reach. During one brief session, I got to meet scientists at varying career stages, from multiple different countries, employing different model organisms, and asking vastly different scientific questions. At times I would just sit there listening to conversations taking place between experts in fields totally different than mine, and I was enjoying every minute of it!
One thing I really appreciated about this conference was the emphasis on the connection between basic science and translational research. We got to hear from researchers doing amazing work at all points along this continuum, including some who managed to follow projects from the discovery of a mutation to implementation of new treatments in the clinic. As someone who is working on the more basic characterization of a disease phenotype but hoping to see treatments head towards the clinic someday, it was fascinating to see how this process can work in real life. I also absolutely loved the patient testimonials, which help remind us that the diseases we study, while sometimes abstract in our minds, are things real people are struggling with every day. I hope to keep seeing this type of session implemented in disease-focused conferences.
Overall, this conference was a fantastic opportunity to hear about cutting-edge science in the disease modelling and developmental biology field, and I look forward to attending it again in the future!
Nicole Edwards, Postdoctoral Fellow, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, USA
Virtual scientific conferences have made it possible for early career researchers to share our work and interact with colleagues during the COVID-19 pandemic. Having run very successful virtual seminars (namely “Development presents…”) in the past year, I looked forward to a wonderful experience at the online meeting run jointly by the journals Development and Disease Models & Mechanisms, Developmental Disorders: From Mechanism to Treatment. The meeting struck an excellent balance between invited talks, short talks, and flash talks – a series of 3-minute presentations given by participants. Flash talks were a great opportunity to learn about the breadth of science being conducted by meeting participants and gave talking points for discussion time after the talks. Presenting posters at online meetings are challenging, so 3-minute flash talks were a great alternative to get maximum engagement at this virtual meeting.
I greatly appreciated that this meeting also incorporated views and collaborations between physicians, clinical geneticists, and basic scientists working on a variety of disease models. These collaborations are where the rare disease field is headed in order to make the most impact clinically, and to help understand the underlying biology of these developmental disorders. With this, one of the most impactful session included a series of patient and family interviews, reminding us of the real implications our research on rare diseases has.
I had the opportunity to give a ten-minute short talk which I pre-recorded on Zoom, making it overall less stressful and lessened the chances of technical glitches giving a live talk. Having dedicated “Meet the Speaker” networking time afterwards was a plus, and the online platform Remo was easy to navigate and to facilitate discussion. If you couldn’t catch a particular participant you wanted to talk with, it was easy to use the chat feature in Remo to make connections.
Finally, I encourage any early-career researcher to attend a Workshop and/or Journal Meeting run by The Company of Biologists, either virtually or hopefully soon, in-person. Having been to both their in-person and online meetings, I have experienced how much The Company of Biologists strives to support early-career researchers. The Company of Biologists meetings truly are unparalleled opportunities to be involved with the future of your scientific field.
After the excitement and debate covered in the previous Developing news blog, the #devbio twittersphere was a little less controversial these past two weeks, but these are the topics we enjoyed.
Does collecting data drive biology forward?
An article in Nature discussing the importance of hypothesis driven science, not just data collection
Some thoughts from the #devbio community
The importance of theory and ideas (as well as data) for biology. By my @TheCrick colleague Paul Nurse
"Ideas, even tentative ones, are needed, along with the recognition that ideas will change as facts and arguments accumulate.”https://t.co/URohwnR6Ig
This x1000 – really excellent article. For example, there's currently too much single-cell-seq data in developmental biology without scientific ideas attached.
More papers with ideas in them! Not data for the sake of having data! Such an important and timely opinion article from Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse. I’m happy @nature published it and hope they’ll take it into consideration when evaluating submissions!!!https://t.co/fK0oN8Zgb4
Last week was postdoc appreciation week and we loved that our twitter feed was full of students, fellow postdocs and PIs giving thanks to their colleagues. We have collated all the tweets here
Careers tweets
We have also picked out three career-related tweets and the resulting discussions
Complain all you want, Twitter. I’m an academic and it’s the best job in the world. pic.twitter.com/CQogSyEuEl
Getting quite tired of the false choice narrative around Great Science vs Reasonable Pay in academia. Not helpful for trainees who are in their 20s/30s w loans and families. If you want to talk about diversity in STEM, start here
Thanks to the #DevBio community for sharing their thoughts, especially on twitter. If you have some news that you think we should share with the developmental biology community on our blog, please get in touch at thenode@biologists.com. If you are interested in getting involved with writing preLights you can find out more here.
On Wednesday 22 September Development hosted two researchers with interests in genes and development for our tenth Development presents… webinar
Below you’ll find each of the talks, plus a Q&A chaired by Development Editor Haruhiko Koseki. The next #DevPres webinar will be held on 13 October 2021, and chaired by James Briscoe – subscribe to our mailing list for updates.
Hirosuke Shiura (University of Yamanashi) – PEG10 viral aspartic protease domain is essential for the maintenance of fetal capillary structure in the mouse placenta
Thanks to everyone who responded to our call for shout out to, and stories about, the fabulous postdocs in your life. It was wondering to hear from students thanking their mentors, fellow postdocs appreciating the support and friendship of their colleagues and PIs praising their postdocs.
A few highlights from these posts were:
Steve Royle coining the term ‘postdoctacular’, which should hopefully gain traction in the science community
Andrew Bowman appreciating that his postdoc, Alonso, brings huge bottles of wine from Spain
Miguel Branco and Ondine Cleaver bringing our attention to all the different roles a postdoc has to fill
New PIs Maxim Greenberg and Gautam Dey recognising and appreciating the leap of faith a postdoc takes going to a new group (especially in the midst of a pandemic!)
We have included all the tweets we received below. They make this blog really long, but we love the sentiment behind them all, and wanted to give them a permanent place on the Node.
Of course, all these warm fuzzies are great, but interestingly our very first response was from Nishit Srivastava, raising the important subjects of contracts, living conditions and recognition for postdocs. A reminder that, as a community, to really show our appreciation to postdocs we must strive to support them all year around.
If institutes really want to appreciate postdocs, then walk the talk and show it in the form of better contracts, living conditions, and recognise us as the important cog in the wheel of science. https://t.co/SnfhmI8ccM
So appreciative and thankful for my two star postdocs Lomeli and Ezra! They make my science life better with their enthusiasm and ideas making it fun to come to the lab everyday. https://t.co/j8QeXNDczZ
I would like to thank Dr. @Marthabaydoun, my true mentor, my life savior, my inspiration and someone I learnt soooo much scientifically and personally. I hope the best, with all new opportunities and possibilities heading to her life. You go gurl 💪 https://t.co/Vtf2XMkA1a
as a young PI I was lucky to have @GiuGuiducci when I started my lab! She is not only doing amazing science but Is also a great colleagues and a mentor to other students + my right arm in the lab! Go girl! #PostdocAppreciationWeekhttps://t.co/bLWvpt1WxZ
#PostdocAppreciationWeek thanks to ll the postdocs who have inspired me since my undergrad to continue in research. Special thanks to one postdoc who throughout all the lockdowns supported my chemist without a lab phase, despite not being a chemist. 🤩 https://t.co/fxP6mZaeZI
Do not know where I would be without the postdocs I have worked w in my young career. My first two mentors, both postdocs, were exceptional humans and scientists. And in graduate school I’ve had @ZhaoyangLiu_5 and @elle_roberson to look up to as inspiring female scientists. https://t.co/VD2p9aKM2A
Grateful for my undergraduate postdoc mentor and stellar scientist @RobertJHuebner1 ❤️ and for @elle_roberson, the scientist who has inspired me with her work and female empowerment since the day we met ❤️ Thank you! https://t.co/l1DTU6jE5V
Postdoc life is not 'just' being at the bench focusing on your own experiments. The tireless @neverlethetruth and @smamante1 are also mentors, advisors, lab managers, administrators,… And somehow they keep coming to work with a smile! You guys rock. https://t.co/1ggnRbfg18
I don't know how I lucked into them, but @AnaMonteagudo4 and @jrichardalbert both went to a foreign country in the middle of a pandemic to work in a start-up lab. Not only are they great people, but now they are cranking out data! The appreciation (and pride) is immense! https://t.co/vYmTpZhwSR
Postdocs are leaders in the lab. They drive discovery, they mentor, and they think and work so darned hard. I have appreciated @XiaowuGu and @AhujaNH every single day. 🙏 The lab wouldn't be the same without them. https://t.co/Cvmc6ItHSq
In the latest Genetics Unzipped podcast, Dr Kat Arney takes a look at how we learned to read the book of life, from the earliest days of DNA sequencing to the very latest futuristic technologies.
Today, sequencing machines in labs around the world are churning out billions of basepairs of DNA data, and the very latest techniques even promise to allow us to read DNA inside cells. The cost of reading a whole human genome has gone from $2.7 billion dollars for the first one to a few hundred or even less or even zero, depending on how you count it and who’s paying.
And as you’ll know if you’re a fan of this podcast, widespread, cheaper access to rapid DNA sequencing has revolutionised almost every aspect of life sciences research, from personalized medicine and clinical diagnostics to conservation, infectious diseases, evolutionary biology and much, much more.
We’ve come a long way since those early days. So how did we get from there to here?
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
Royal Society Publishing has recently published a special issue of Philosophical Transactions B: Synchrony and rhythm interaction: from the brain to behavioural ecology compiled and edited by Michael D Greenfield, Henkjan Honing, Sonja Kotz and Andrea Ravignani and the articles can be accessed directly at www.bit.ly/PTB1835
Which model is the best for studying human development?
A Perspective article in Nature about the Human Developmental Cell Atlas
Some responses from the #devbio community (note this article created a twitter storm, especially the size of the circles in Fig1c. We have picked out a few twitter threads)
The incredulous responses last week to chick embryos developing similarly to human at early stages explains A LOT. The reality is that all research models have benefits and drawbacks. There isn’t a “best one,” and if we don’t open our minds we miss out on cool discoveries. https://t.co/KsW9SA9TR5
While I do understand all the upset about the recent @Nature paper on the comparison of model oganisms, (see Figure 1c here : https://t.co/GI6WxmEe6i) I am not sure I would be upset for the same reason. Obviously fly is not the best system to reproduce human development, BUT…
There are many wonderful twitter threads offering advice to new graduate students, and indeed much of the advice is relevant to the wider community. Here are a couple of our favourites:
With the new academic year starting, and many people beginning fresh as graduate students, post-docs, or junior faculty, I have been thinking a lot about the core philosophies that govern my own perspectives on science. So I thought I would share. Welcome to The Tao of Cheese
Thanks to the #DevBio community for making this such an interesting couple of weeks, especially on twitter. If you have some news that you think we should share with the developmental biology community on our blog, please get in touch at thenode@biologists.com. If you are interested in getting involved with writing preLights you can find out more here.
For our tenth webinar in the Development presents… series, Development Editor Haruhiko Koseki (RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences) has invited interesting talks on genes and development.
Pablo Narravo Gil (Principal investigator at the Pasteur Institute) ‘H3K9me3 at Nanog, preparing and promoting the loss of pluripotency’
Hirosuke Shiura (Assistant Professor at the University of Yamanashi) ‘PEG10 viral aspartic protease domain is essential for the maintenance of fetal capillary structure in the mouse placenta’
The webinar will be held in Remo, our browser-based conferencing platform. After the talks you’ll have the chance to meet the speakers and other participants at virtual conference tables. If you can’t make it on the day, talks will be available to watch after the event on the Node. You can also sign up to our mailing list for email alerts.
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