Variations on a 'T': orchestration of T-box signalling in development

The British Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB) autumn meeting on ‘T-box Genes in Development and Disease’ was held in Nottingham, UK, from 16 to 18 September 2002.     

Nuclear processes controlled by molecular machines

A report on the 'Nuclear Structure and Function' symposium at the joint spring meeting of the British Society for Cell Biology, British Society for Developmental Biology and Genetics Society, York, UK, 20-23 March 2002.     

New animal models for evolution and development

A report on the annual UK Evolutionary Developmental Biology meeting, Oxford, UK, 13 September 2004.     

Developmental diorama

Spring meeting of the British Society for Developmental Biology, held April 2003 at the University of Warwick, UK.     

Developmental biologists cast a net over sequenced genomes

A report on the annual meeting of the Society of Developmental Biology, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, 21-24 July 2002.     

Trends in genomic 'evo-devo'

A report on the joint Spring meeting of the British Society of Developmental Biology and the Genetics Society, York, UK, 20-23 March 2002.     

Big science meets small embryos

A meeting report from the Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA, July 21-25, 2000.     

Evolution of developmental mechanisms

A report on the joint Spring meeting of the British Society of Developmental Biology and the Genetics Society, York, UK, 20-23 March 2002.     

The 30th Anniversary Crete Fly Meeting: From individual molecules to 12 genomes,and beyond

The 16^th biennial meeting of the EMBO-sponsored International Workshop on the Molecular and Developmental Biology of Drosophila was held in Kolymbari, Crete from June 23 to June 28, 2008. As in previous years, the weather was hot, the Mediterranean Sea was clear and blue and the presentations were exciting and illuminating.     

Turning neurons into a nervous system

The RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology recently held its 2008 Symposium ;Turning Neurons into a Nervous System' in Kobe, Japan. The program, organized by Masatoshi Takeichi, Joshua Sanes, Hideki Enomoto and Raj Ladher, provided a rich sampling from current work in developmental neurobiology. Researchers from Japan, Europe and the USA gathered at this meeting to share insights into neural development and to admire the opening of the cherry blossom season.     

Q & A. Philip Ingham

Philip Ingham grew up in Liverpool and graduated from Cambridge University in 1977. He did his D.Phil in Developmental Genetics at Sussex University and postdoctoral work in Strasbourg, France before joining the laboratory of David Ish-Horowicz at the ICRF Mill Hill Laboratories. Here he applied the emerging technique of tissue in situ hybridisation to the analysis of the Drosophila segmentation genes. After a short spell at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, he rejoined the ICRF as a Research Scientist at the Developmental Biology Unit in Oxford. His group pioneered the analysis of the Hedgehog signalling pathway in Drosophila and in collaboration with the labs of Andy McMahon and Cliff Tabin at Harvard University, discovered the Hedgehog gene family in vertebrates. In 1996 he was appointed Professor of Developmental Genetics at the University of Sheffield where he has established the Centre for Developmental Genetics.     

A brief history of the Japan Society for Cell Biology

The Japan Society for Cell Biology (JSCB) was first founded in 1950 as the Japan Society for Cellular Chemistry under the vigorous leadership of Seizo Katsunuma, in collaboration with Shigeyasu Amano and Satimaru Seno. The Society was provisionally named as above simply because cell biology had not yet been coined at that time in Japan, although in prospect and reality the Society was in fact for the purpose of pursuing cell biology. Later in 1964, the Society was properly renamed as the Japan Society for Cell Biology. After this renaming, the JSCB made great efforts to adapt itself to the rapid progress being made in cell biology. For this purpose the Society's constitution was created in 1966 and revised in 1969. According to the revised constitution, the President, Executive Committee and Councils were to be determined by ballot vote. The style of the annual meetings was gradually modified to incorporate general oral and poster presentations in addition to Symposia (1969-1974). The publication of annual periodicals in Japanese called Symposia of the Japan Society for Cellular Chemistry (1951-1967) and later Symposia of the Japan Society for Cell Biology (1968-1974) was replaced by a new international journal called Cell Structure and Function initiated in 1975. This reformation made it possible for the Society to participate in the Science Council of Japan in 1975 and finally in 1993 to acquire its own study section of Cell Biology with grants-in-aid from the Ministry of Education and Science, Japan. The JSCB hosted the 3rd International Congress on Cell Biology (ICCB) in 1984 and the 3rd Asian-Pacific Organization for Cell Biology (APOCB) Congress in 1998, thus contributing to the international advancement of cell biology. Now the membership of JSCB stands at approximately 1,800 and the number of presentations per meeting is 300 to 400 annually. Although a good number of interesting and important findings in cell biology have been reported from Japan, the general academic activity of the JSCB is far less than one might expect. This is simply due the fact that academic activity in the field of cell biology in Japan is divided among several other related societies such as the Japan Society for Molecular Biology and the Japan Society for Developmental Biology, among others.     

Meeting report: Third Franco-Japanese developmental biology meeting “New Frontiers in developmental biology: Celebrating the diversity of life”

The French and Japanese Developmental Biology Societies, teaming up with Human Frontier Science Program, were eager to meet back in person in November 2022 in the lovely city of Strasbourg. Top scientists in the developmental biology field from France and Japan, but also from United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland or Germany shared their exciting science during the 4 days of this meeting. Core fields of developmental biology such as morphogenesis, patterning, cell identity, and cell state transition, notably at the single cell level, were well represented, and a diversity of experimental models, including plants, animals, and other exotic organisms, as well as some in vitro cellular models, were covered. This event also extended the scope of classic scientific gatherings for two reasons. First the involvement of artists during the preparation of the event and on site. Second, part of the meeting was open for the general public through a series of outreach events, including a music and video presentation through projection mapping at Rohan palace, as well as public lectures.     

Making waves: the rise and fall and rise of quantitative developmental biology

The tenth annual RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology symposium 'Quantitative Developmental Biology' held in March 2012 covered a range of topics from coat colour patterning to the mechanics of morphogenesis. The studies presented shared a common theme in which a combination of physical theory, quantitative analysis and experiment was used to understand a specific cellular process in development. This report highlights these innovative studies and the long-standing questions in developmental biology that they seek to answer.     

A tribute to Dr. Gordon Hisashi Sato (December 24, 1927–March 31, 2017)

Gordon H. Sato, an innovator in mammalian tissue culture and integrated cellular physiology, passed away in 2017. In tribute to Dr. Sato, In Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology—Animal presents a collection of invited remembrances from six colleagues whose associations with Dr. Sato spanned more than 40 years. Dr. Sato was a past president of the Tissue Culture Association (now the Society for In Vitro Biology), editor-in-chief of In Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology (1987–1991), and the recipient of the lifetime achievement award from the Society for In Vitro Biology (2002). He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1984.     

The color purple: analyzing alkaline phosphatase expression in experimentally manipulated sea urchin embryos in an undergraduate developmental biology course

In these laboratory exercises, developed for a sophomore/junior-level undergraduate course in Developmental Biology, students explore the processes of differentiation and morphogenesis in sea urchin embryos by monitoring the spatio-temporal expression pattern of the endoderm marker, alkaline phosphatase. Once students have determined the normal alkaline phosphatase expression pattern, they are asked to treat sea urchin embryos in some way that perturbs normal morphogenesis. Their task is to discover whether the chosen treatment perturbs both morphogenesis and differentiation of the gut or only morphogenesis. The ease with which sea urchin embryos can be cultured and manipulated provide the Developmental Biology instructor with a powerful system for inviting students to explore questions regarding differentiation and morphogenesis.     

Somatic embryogenesis: A valuable alternative for propagating selected robusta coffee (Coffea canephora) clones

In Vitro Cellular &; Developmental Biology - Plant - The behavior of four coffee (Coffea canephora cv. Robusta) clones was evaluated in this work to define the conditions that would allõw...