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2012 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology meeting

Bob Goldstein — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:49:37 +0000

Wake your labmates and tell your friends - abstracts are due in 1 week, by Friday June 1!

The meeting
The Santa Cruz Developmental Biology meeting will be held Aug 8-11. Since 1992, the SCDB has been one of the premier meetings in Developmental Biology. The 20th anniversary meeting continues its emphasis on innovative developmental biology, focusing on morphogenesis, cell polarity, evo-devo, development and disease, patterning, neurogenesis, regeneration and stem cells. The meeting will be held on the beautiful, sunny UC Santa Cruz campus and is designed to foster interactions among scientists from labs around the world, from beginning students to leaders in the field. We have 27 invited speakers, and 19 more speakers will be selected from the abstracts submitted.

SCDB Young Investigator Award
If you are a grad student, postdoc, or junior faculty, you’re eligible to be considered for the SCDB Young Investigator Award. The awardee will be selected based on his or her meeting abstract and CV. The SCDB Young Investigator Awardee will speak in the opening session along with our Keynote Speakers Marty Chalfie, Lee Niswander, and Eric Betzig!

More information…
See the meeting web site at www.scdb2012.com

See you in Santa Cruz!

Wellcome Trust Conference: Sub-Nuclear Structures and Disease

treasa — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:31:07 +0000

Abstract & Bursary deadline: 11 May | Registration deadline: 31 May

Now in its third year, this Wellcome Trust meeting will focus on the biology of sub-nuclear structures including the nucleolus, cajal and PML bodies. These structures have key roles in normal and diseased cells and they interact in a dynamic way. A fundamental understanding of these sub-nuclear structures can lead to advances in our understanding of infectious disease and cancer.

The conference will bring together cell biologists, microbiologists and virologists working on normal and tumor cells and researchers interested in how these structures are affected by infectious and acquired disease across all eukaryotic systems.

Scientific Organisers:
Susan Baserga Yale University, USA
Julian Hiscox University of Leeds, UK

David Matthews University of Bristol, UK
Brian McStay NUI Galway, Ireland

Invited Speakers include:
Susan Baserga Yale University, USA
Richard Gardner University of Washington, USA
Ingrid Grummt Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Germany
Ross Hannan Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Australia
Valerie Lallemand-Breitenbach Hopital Saint-Louis, France
Angus Lamond University of Dundee, UK
Greg Matera University of North Carolina, USA
Brian McStay NUIG, Ireland
Karla Neugebauer Max Planck Institute, Germany
Craig S. Pikaard Indiana University, USA
Michael Taliansky The James Hutton Institute, UK
David Tollervey University of Edinburgh, UK
Adrian Whitehouse University of Leeds, UK

Abstract submission is strongly encouraged as several talks will be selected from abstracts.

For more information: https://registration.hinxton.wellcome.ac.uk/display_info.asp?id=294

Inflammation and Atherosclerosis – September 20-21, 2012 in Munich, Germany

Abcam Events — Wed, 02 May 2012 08:59:11 +0000

Upcoming deadlines: oral abstracts – June 11, 2012

Topics:
• Genes, lipids and systemic inflammatione
• Early inflammatory and immune-driven atherogenesis
• Atheroprogression, ER-stress and unstable plaques
• Novel therapeutic options involving miRNAs

Speaker list:
Full speaker list available on meeting website.

Meeting website:
http://www.abcam.com/Munich

BSDB/BSCB/JSDB Joint Spring Meeting Report, part two

Lucy Freem — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:27:25 +0000

Tuesday: Cell cycling and growth, stem cells and fate, and medal-winners’ lectures

Buzz Baum opened the cell cycle and growth in development session with a talk about his lab’s work at UCL on cell shape changes during mitosis in dissociated culture and in epithelial sheets. The talk covered cell rounding on entry into mitosis due to actin remodelling and the links between cell shape change and successful mitosis progression. Anna Philpott of the University of Cambridge discussed the regulation of proliferation and differentiation by post-translational modifications, including the accumulation of multi-site phosphorylation events, in neurogenesis.

Alison Lloyd gave a talk on Schwann cell dedifferentiation and proliferation in adult regeneration and the behaviour of proliferative Schwann cells after injury. She also discussed results from a novel mouse model of neurofibroma from her lab at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology and the UCL Cancer Institute. Fumio Matsuzaki of RIKEN CDB described asymmetric, symmetric and the rarely-observed oblique stem cell divisions in the subventricular zone, and their potential involvement in altering the balance of cortical progenitor numbers and promoting brain expansion in mammalian brain evolution.

The second poster session was held over Tuesday lunchtime, concurrent with a seminar on Huygens deconvolution in microscopy sponsored by Scientific Volume Imaging.

Stem cells and cell fate choice were the topics of the afternoon session. The many interesting presentations on stem cell topics in this and other sessions were an excellent reminder of the degree to which stem cell biology is integral to many developmental biology subfields. Sally Lowell’s talk on priming pluripotent cells for differentiation first established an incremental, rather than binary, model for progressive ES cell differentiation, before presenting findings on pro-differentiation signalling and transcription factor interactions. Mario Stavridis, a young PI at Dundee University, gave a fascinating talk on post-translational modification with beta-O-N-acetylated glucosamine, a parallel mechanism to protein phosphorylation that regulates embryonic stem cell differentiation. Berenika Plusa presented wonderful videos of live cell sorting in transgenic mouse blastocysts, showing cell type emergence and behaviour during the establishment of cell fate.

Josh Brickman spoke on lineage priming in embryonic stem cells, looking at the small initial differences in key molecule transcription and translation that prime stem cells to later adopt different fates. Soshei Yoshida from the National institute for Basic Biology, Japan, capped the session with a report on the process of spermatogenic stem cell self-renewal and progressive differentiation in the live mouse testis, discussing how continuity in mouse spermatogenesis is promoted by the long-term maintenance of a range of undifferentiated progenitor cell types.

The Beddington medal was awarded to Boyan Bonev, who gave an excellent talk on his PhD work in Nancy Papalopulu’s lab on the role of microRNA-9 in neural progenitor development variation in space and time. Mutual regulation and oscillation between microRNA-9 and Hes transcription was found to produce a delayed trigger for neuronal differentiation.

The Waddington medal was presented to Alfonso Martinez-Arias of Cambridge University. As is traditional, his talk provided a retrospective of his life and career, with the inclusion of a number of special effects and musical numbers along with descriptions of his work on key Drosophila developmental pathways and cell fate determination. He closed his talk with words of solidarity for the upcoming generation of young scientists.

The evening graduate symposium was opened by Daphne Verleyen from the University of Leuven, who continued an emerging theme of the conference with her talk on left-right axis formation via cilia behaviour in Kupffer’s vesicle. She described results from a g-protein coupled receptor mutant zebrafish line with axis formation defects. Debbie McIntosh from the University of Dundee spoke on replication fork formation in stressed and cancerous cells, describing the results of a molecular screen on replication fork behaviour. Keliya Bai from the University of Aberdeen talked on epithelial elongation in c. elegans embryos through actin cytoskeleton contraction, and discussed an extensive screen carried out for components of the actin-anchoring complex.

Eight BSDB and BSCB poster prize winners were announced at the conference dinner, including Stephen Fleenor, Ricardo Laranjeiro, Tom Pettini and Jorge Beira. The delicious and social 3-course conference dinner was followed by disco music and dancing, over which a discrete veil will be drawn. A good time was had by all.

Wednesday: in vitro models of development and regeneration

The last session on in vitro models of developmental biology included talks from a number of regenerative medicine biologists, who provided a different perspective on in vitro culture as a tool for clinical applications as well as a model for examining tissue and cell function.

Keith Baar from UC Davis opened the day with his work on growing ligaments for transplant and using cultured ligaments as high throughput test bed for BMPs, FGFs and other combinations of molecules to examine their roles in tendon development. Andrea Vortkamp from University Duisberg-Essen presented results from analysis of chondrocyte development in a mouse mutant model of tricho-rhino-phalangeal syndrome, caused by Trps1 mutation, which is characterised by shortened limbs. The mutation appears to cause defects in cell cycle progression in chondrocytes due to effects on chromatin acetylation levels.

Masayuki Yamamoto from Tokyo Women’s Medical University gave an energetic talk on shyabu-shyabu bioengineering, which creates scaffold-free thin layers of tissue, including cornea, esophageal epithelium and skeletal muscle for human transplant. The culture technique used a polymer with temperature dependant cell-adhering properties, allowing cells and ECM to be harvested as a single sheet with the now-available UpCell dishes. Fiona Watt, head of the Centre for Stem Cell and Regenerative medicine at KCL, finished the conference on a high note with her talk on epidermal stem cell and niche interactions and responses of these groups of cells to microenvironmental cues. Her talk highlighted the research progress made through close collaboration with chemists and bioengineers in producing faithful and incisive in vitro models of the epithelial stem cell niche.

As always, the BSDB Spring meeting was a chance to see a good cross-section of current developmental biology research and – thanks to the BSCB joint meeting – catch up on relevant cell biology topics in the same place. It was also great to meet up with so many people from previous years’ conferences and see how their research has evolved. I look forward especially to seeing JSDB members again in future conferences.

BSDB/BSCB/JSDB Joint Spring Meeting Report, part one

Lucy Freem — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:25:50 +0000

The 2012 Spring meeting of the British Society for Developmental Biology was held on the 15^th-18^th April at the spacious campus of Warwick University. The meeting was held jointly with the Japanese Society for Developmental Biology and the British Society for Cell Biology. Many delegates from the JSDB attended, presented interesting talks and posters and greatly enlivened proceedings.

Sunday: Plenary lectures

The evening BSDB plenary lecture was given by Denis Duboule on the vertebrate Hox clock, describing the regulation of temporally and spatially collinearly expressed Hox genes. Focusing on the HoxD cluster, he described the use of ChIP and chromatin crosslinking to map the state of Hox gene packaging at different points in the Hox expression clock, presenting a directional chromatin transition-mediated model for temporal regulation of Hox gene expression within a Hox cluster. The BSCB plenary lecture by J.Richard McIntosh of the University of Colorado discussed microtubule tips as mechano-chemical devices, describing work showing how microtubules are capable of transporting loads at the depolymerising pole of the microtubule through the behaviour of depolarising filaments.

The joint plenary session was a great start to the conference on Sunday night, followed by the student and post-doc social pub quiz (joined by a few BSDB committee members), a great chance for some in-depth student socialising. Honourable mention to the winners of the coveted ‘best team name’ prize, Insane in the Phospholipid Bilayer, for making everyone laugh.

Monday: Systems biology, scientific careers, imaging in development, and a turbulent AGM

The day’s first session on systems biology and next generation genome sequencing was opened by Duncan Odom speaking on transcriptional regulation in mammals, looking in particular at non-conserved promoter sequences that produce conserved transcription factor binding patterns along the cis-regulatory region. Shane Herbert described the role of the homeobox gene hlx1 in sprouting endothelial tubules in zebrafish angiogenesis, introducing the tip/stalk model of growing blood vessels that appeared again in later talks. Erika Sasaki of the Institute for Experimental Animals in Kawasaki gave a fascinating talk on the use of lentiviral vectors in the generation of transgenic marmosets and the applications of transgenic primates in neurological and preclinical research. Kazuo Emoto from the Osaka Bioscience Institute opened the second half of the session with a talk on the shaping of Drosophila sensory neuron dendritic trees into sensory lattices through growth, calcium-current related pruning, regrowth and reshaping.

The Monday lunchtime career panel of PIs arranged by conference organiser Kim Dale dispensed advice and answered post-doc and student questions. The process of carving out a distinct and different niche in your field was discussed, as well as the importance of having and nurturing a passion for your chosen research subject – to sustain you through the inevitable lows (“It doesn’t stop hurting, but you eventually grow numb…”) of labwork, publishing and funding as well as the highs. The impact of uncertainty and mobility in scientific careers on partners was also discussed, with the panel mentioning the necessity of discussing the burdens of scientific spouses. There was also mention of the importance of awareness of the ticking fellowship clock, with panellists stressing that many independent fellowships are restricted to applicants within 6 years of their PhD award. For those interested in interdisciplinary research, the EIPOD EMBL postdoctoral fellowship program was recommended later in the conference.

The Monday afternoon session contained a range of talks on imaging space and time during development. Elliot Meyerowitz of the new Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge (who have a stated wealth of funding, positions and space, for all the plant developmental biologists reading) gave the lone but highly engaging plant development talk of the conference on shoot apical meristem patterning, including computer modelling of the role of both morphogens and physical forces on cells in the spiral pattern of meristem development. Toshiko Fujimori presented findings on cilia development and function in the mouse oviduct. He focused on the role of planar cell polarity in cilia orientation and oviduct membrane folding, demonstrating the links between micro and macroscopic organ morphology.

Antonio Jacinto’s talk on epithelial wound closure showcased some interesting videos of laser ablation and wound healing in Drosophila epithelial sheets, unpicking the rapid cytoskeletal processes behind the epithelial cell reshaping response to injury. Georgina Stooke-Vaughn from Sheffield University gave an assured talk on her ongoing PhD work on otolith development and hair cell cilia in the developing zebrafish vestibular system. Ryoichiro Kageyama of Kyoto University spoke on ultradian (shorter than circadian) rhythms in the somite segmentation clock in mouse, focusing on the processes behind and downstream of oscillations in Hes7 expression in the presomitic mesoderm. Hes expression oscillation was a popular theme, also appearing in several posters and the Beddington medal talk.

Finishing the afternoon session with a bang, the Hooke medal talk was delivered by Holger Gerhardt of Cancer Research UK on cell competition and vascular development in zebrafish, discussing tip and stalk cell dynamics in growing epithelial tubules. He presented both experimental and compelling visualised mathematical model evidence for a regulatory network involving VEGF and Notch that patterns angiogenic branching at intervals along the zebrafish spine.

The BSDB AGM took place on Monday evening. The vote to fill 3 open BSDB committee spaces was held, and it was announced later in the conference the new members are Anna Philpott, Jo Begbie and Henry Roehl. It was also announced that future spring meetings will be held at Warwick University for the next few years.

The evening poster session was lively and stimulating, with freely flowing ideas and beer.

Tweets from the BSCB/BSDB/JSDB meeting

Eva Amsen — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:59:37 +0000

Although there was no “official hashtag” to be used on Twitter, several attendees of the recent BSCB/BSDB/JSDB meeting were livetweeting the event. I tried to keep up, and collected several of the tweets in this Storify, so you can see what was discussed online during the conference. A full report from the meeting is on its way as well.

Epigenomics of Common Diseases 12-15 October 2012

treasa — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:11:16 +0000

Abstract deadline: 27 July 2012 | Registration deadline: 1 September 2012

Building on the success of last year’s event, ECD 2012 will bring together scientists from the fields of epigenomics, genetics and bioinformatics to discuss the latest developments in this fast-moving field. This Wellcome Trust conference will discuss recent advances focusing on genome-wide approaches that are revolutionizing the field. Recent technological developments have made it possible to conduct epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) to investigate the link between changes to the epigenome and the development of disease. Sessions will include: epigenomic studies across of a range of common diseases, including psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders and diseases of the immune system; model organisms and model systems; mathematical approaches to epigenomics; intergenerational and environmental effects; and translational epigenomics.

Abstract submission is strongly encouraged as a significant number of presentations will be selected from the abstracts.

Scientific organising committee:
Stephan Beck, University College London, UK
Susan Clark, The Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Australia
Andy Feinberg, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA
Anne Ferguson-Smith, University of Cambridge, UK

Venue:
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD, USA

Keynote Speakers:
Shelley Berger, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Bert Vogelstein, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, USA

Invited Speakers include:
Stephan Beck, University College London, UK
Jessica Connelly, University of Virginia, USA
Daniele Fallin, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA
Andy Feinberg, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA
Doug Higgs, University of Oxford, UK
Tim Huang, University of Texas Health Science Center, USA
Barbara Knowles, ASTAR, Singapore
X. Shirley Liu, Dana-Farber/Harvard School of Public Health, USA
Shalini Oberdoerffer, National Cancer Institute, USA
Dirk Schübeler, Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Switzerland
Amos Tanay, Weizmann Institute, Israel
Toshikazu Ushijima, National Cancer Center Research Institute, Japan

For more information: https://registration.hinxton.wellcome.ac.uk/display_info.asp?id=298

Dates for your calendar

the Node — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:34:12 +0000

Registration deadlines:

April 29 - Early registration and abstract submission deadline for the third meeting of the European Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology (EED)

April 30 – Registration deadline for Molecular & Cellular Basis of Regeneration & Tissue Repair (EMBO conference and BSDB Autumn Symposium)

May 28 – Early registration deadline for the SDB meeting
June 4 – late abstract submission deadline for the SDB meeting

[added 26/4] June 1 - Abstract submission deadline for the Santa Cruz Developmental Biology meeting.

BSDB 2012

Katherine Brown — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 08:44:43 +0000

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

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

The 2012 UK National Xenopus Conference

Victoria Hatch — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:11:25 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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