From genes to plants via meristems

The Society for Experimental Biology organised a "Plant Frontier" meeting, which was recently held at the University of Sheffield, UK. One of the sessions of this broad meeting was on plant meristems, which covered a range of topics, including stem cells, patterning, long distance signalling and epigenetic regulation of meristem development.     

From proteins to systems: the British Society for Proteomics Research (BSPR) meeting 2005

This report describes the highlights of the second scientific meeting of the British Society for Proteome Research (BSPR), jointly organised with the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), and held at The Genome Centre, Cambridge UK in July 2005. The theme of the meeting was "From Proteins to Systems" covering many diverse aspects of proteomics, bioinformatics and systems biology.     

Variant surface antigens, virulence genes and the pathogenesis of malaria

The first Molecular Approaches to Malaria meeting was held 2-5 February 2000 in Lorne, Australia. Following the meeting, Brian Cooke, Mats Wahlgren and Ross Coppel predicted that research into the molecular details of the mechanisms behind sequestration of parasitized erythrocytes would "become increasingly more complicated, with further interactions, receptors, ligands and functional domains". Furthermore, they cautioned that "the challenge will be not to lose ourselves in the molecular detail, but remain focused on the role of [the var genes and other multigene families] in pathogenesis of malaria". We contemplate on these statements, following the recent second Molecular Approaches to Malaria meeting, which was held at the same venue on 2-5 February 2004.     

Advances in transgenic animal models and techniques

On May 11th and 12th 2017 was held in Nantes, France, the international meeting “Advances in transgenic animal models and techniques” (http://www.trm.univ-nantes.fr/). This biennial meeting is the fifth one of its kind to be organized by the Transgenic Rats ImmunoPhenomic (TRIP) Nantes facility (http://www.tgr.nantes.inserm.fr/). The meeting was supported by private companies (SONIDEL, Scionics computer innovation, New England Biolabs, MERCK, genOway, Journal Disease Models and Mechanisms) and by public institutions (International Society for Transgenic Technology, University of Nantes, INSERM UMR 1064, SFR François Bonamy, CNRS, Région Pays de la Loire, Biogenouest, TEFOR infrastructure, ITUN, IHU-CESTI and DHU-Oncogeffe and Labex IGO). Around 100 participants, from France but also from different European countries, Japan and USA, attended the meeting.     

真菌地衣系统学开放研究实验室 学术委员会第三次会议纪要

真菌地衣系统学开放研究实验室第一届学术委员会第三次会议于1988年10月13-15日在北京举行.出席这次会议的有国内学术委员和国外学术委员、美国康乃尔大学柯夫教授;生物局、政策局、科学报的有关同志;以及本室各课题组组长。本室在京全体研究人员、技术人员列席听取了大会的学术报告和工作报告。会议由学术委员会魏江春主任和郑儒永副主任主持。微生物所宋大康所长致欢迎词.在会议期间,本届学术委员会委员、著名真菌学家、美国康乃尔大学柯夫教授作了题为《今日盘菌系统学:概述子囊菌亚门中单囊壁类群的一些未解决的问题》的学术报告并对今后工作提出了许多宝贵建议。在与会同志的共同努力下,完成了会议预定的三项议程。     

Plant hormones and signaling: common themes and new developments

About 200 plant biologists convened in Keystone, Colorado, for the "Plant Hormones and Signaling" symposium, which was organized by Joanne Chory, Joe Ecker, and Mark Estelle. The meeting was run concurrently with the "Plant Innate Immunity" symposium organized by Jonathan Jones and Jane Glazebrook. In this report, we summarize the progress in plant hormones and signaling.     

Purine and Pyrimidine Metabolism: a Firm Basis for a Transformed Society

Purines and pyrimidines form the backbone of DNA and RNA. Hence, modification of purine and pyrimidine metabolism can have serious effects on normal functioning of a subject. These aspects formed the main topics for an International and a European Series of meetings, dedicated to the metabolism in man. In order to streamline the organization of these meetings the European Society was transformed to an International society: the Purine and Pyrimidine Society (www.ppsociety.org). This special issue of Nucleosides, Nucleotides, and, Nucleic, Acids highlights the last European meeting in Prague, focusing on inborn errors, cardiac diseases, inflammatory diseases, rheumatology, haematology, cancer, virology, genetic polymorphism, specific methodology, and, of course, metabolism. The meeting in Chicago in 2007 will be the first meeting of the Purine and Pyrimidine Society.     

Meeting report: the terabase metagenomics workshop and the vision of an Earth microbiome project

Between July 18(th) and 24(th) 2010, 26 leading microbial ecology, computation, bioinformatics and statistics researchers came together in Snowbird, Utah (USA) to discuss the challenge of how to best characterize the microbial world using next-generation sequencing technologies. The meeting was entitled "Terabase Metagenomics" and was sponsored by the Institute for Computing in Science (ICiS) summer 2010 workshop program. The aim of the workshop was to explore the fundamental questions relating to microbial ecology that could be addressed using advances in sequencing potential. Technological advances in next-generation sequencing platforms such as the Illumina HiSeq 2000 can generate in excess of 250 billion base pairs of genetic information in 8 days. Thus, the generation of a trillion base pairs of genetic information is becoming a routine matter. The main outcome from this meeting was the birth of a concept and practical approach to exploring microbial life on earth, the Earth Microbiome Project (EMP). Here we briefly describe the highlights of this meeting and provide an overview of the EMP concept and how it can be applied to exploration of the microbiome of each ecosystem on this planet.     

High Performance Proteomics: 7th HUPO Brain Proteome Project Workshop March 7-9, 2007 Wellcome Trust Conference Centre, Hinxton, UK

The Wellcome Trust Conference Centre at Hinxton, UK, was the meeting place of the 7th HUPO Brain Proteome Project Workshop entitled "High Performance Proteomics". It started on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 with a steering committee meeting followed by a two days series of talks dealing with the standardization and handling of tissues, body fluids as well as of proteomics data. The presentation and accompanying vivid discussions created a picture of actual strategies and standards in recent proteomics.     

Investigating cellular stress responses--a multidisciplinary approach from basic science to therapeutics--report on the EuroSciCon (European Scientific Conferences) meeting

The meeting on "Investigating cellular stress responses--a multidisciplinary approach from basic science to therapeutics" was held in London on 13 October 2006. The purpose of this 1-day meeting was to bring together European scientists investigating the immune biology of stress proteins and their potential clinical applications. The main topics included: the role of heat shock proteins (Hsps) in bacterial infections; the role of Hsps with a molecular mass of about 70 kDa in cancer therapy and in prediction of the clinical outcome following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation; the quality and duration of stress as a danger signal for the initiation of a stress response; the mechanism of Hsp-protein interaction; and Hsp export from tumor cells in secretory granules.     

On the development of neural diversity in the brain

The FEBS meeting titled "Generating neural diversity in the brain" took place on the island of Capri, from October 13-16. This high-level workshop was the 20(th) in a symposium series organized by the IGB (Instituto Genetica et Biophysica) of Naples funded by international agencies including FEBS, EMBO, European commission. The series is unusual in featuring first-rank international scientist speakers for a meeting whose audience consists primarily of students and post-docs. The endeavour is thus more explicitly educational than many major meetings and the young audience helps create a lively atmosphere. With intense morning and evening sessions, the afternoons are left free for the participants to explore the island, go swimming or relax.     

Workshop on Animal free Detection of Pertussis Toxin in Vaccines--Alternatives to the Histamine Sensitisation Test

The Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (PEI), the Nederlands Vaccin Instituut (NVI) and the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare (EDQM) organised the international scientific workshop "Animal free Detection of Pertussis Toxin in Vaccines--Alternatives to the Histamine Sensitisation Test" at the PEI in Langen (Germany) on 09-10 June 2011. Twenty-seven experts (regulators, representatives from national control laboratories, vaccine manufacturers and academia) from 7 countries participated in this workshop. The meeting was triggered by the lack of satisfaction with the current safety testing for acellular pertussis vaccines, the "Histamine Sensitisation Test" (HIST) in mice, and the growing attention for the alternatives under development. The workshop objectives were: a) to review the current status of available alternative methods, b) to discuss the sensitivity that an alternative test needs, c) to plan experiments that allow for comparison of the alternative tests. The results of the workshop are summarised in this meeting report.     

RNA reigns in neurons

A workshop entitled "RNA Control of Neuronal Function" was recently held in Kfar Blum, Israel. The main topics discussed at the meeting included neuronal RNA targeting mechanisms and the contributing codes and components, translational control mechanisms in dendrites and axons, and the relevance of these mechanisms for neuronal development, plasticity, and dysfunction.     

Epigenetics of germ cells, stem cells, and early embryos

The International Symposium entitled "Germ Cells, Epigenetics, Reprogramming, and Embryonic Stem Cells" was organized by Norio Nakatsuji (Kyoto University) and Hiromitsu Nakauchi (University of Tokyo) in Kyoto, Japan (November 15-18, 2005). The meeting provided an overview of this important research area and highlighted recent advances.     

Barcelona conference on epigenetics and cancer: 50 years of histone acetylation

The Barcelona Conference on Epigenetics and Cancer (BCEC) was held in Barcelona, Spain, on October 1^st and 2^nd, 2014. The meeting was co-organized by the Cancer Epigenetics and Biology Program (PEBC-IDIBELL) and B·Debate, an initiative of Biocat, with the support of "la Caixa" Foundation. The scientific committee was comprised of leading scientists in the field of epigenetics: Dr. Manel Esteller, director of PEBC-IDIBELL, Dr. Alejandro Vaquero and Dr. Esteban Ballestar, from PEBC-IDIBELL, Juan Ausió from the University of Victoria (Canada), and Marcus Buschbeck, from the Institute of Predictive and Personalized Medicine of Cancer (IMPPC), as BCEC series coordinator. This meeting was the second edition of the BCEC series, which was launched by 5 leading Barcelonan institutes to bring together leading investigators in the fields of epigenetics and chromatin research. The topics discussed during the meeting included the current challenges, opportunities, and perspectives surrounding the study of histone modifications (focusing in acetylation), chromatin structure and gene expression, and the involvement of histone acetylation in physiology and diseases, such as cancer or neurological diseases.     

Parasites, flies and men--21st Meeting of the German Society of Parasitology in Würzburg

The German Society of Parasitology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Parasitologie) was founded in 1960 and its 21st biannual meeting took place in Würzburg, Germany, from March 17 to 20, 2004. Whereas interim meetings that are being held every other year focus on specific topics of parasitology, such as the symposia on "Life in Vacuoles" in 2003 and on "Immunomodulation by Parasites" in 2001, the general biannual meetings cover a wide range of topics. This year's meeting at the University of Würzburg was organised by Klaus Brehm and Matthias Frosch (both at the Institute of Hygiene) and Heidrun Moll (Institute for Molecular Biology of Infectious Diseases). It was attended by more than 500 scientists from 16 countries who presented 181 research projects dealing with the topics defence mechanisms and immunology, genomics and proteomics, epidemiology, cell biology and biochemistry, chemotherapy and vaccines, parasite classification and morphology, vectors, intermediate hosts, and veterinary parasitology. In addition, six plenary lectures highlighted the subjects of comparative nematode genomics, cell biology, immunology, and parasite eradication programmes.     

Insights from Fc receptor biology: A route to improved antibody reagents

Fc receptors and their interaction with antibodies will be a major theme at the forthcoming FASEB Science Research Conference on Immunoreceptors to be held in Snowmass this July (details available at www.faseb.org/src/home.aspx, follow the tabs for Immunoreceptors). Since its inception in the mid 1980s, this meeting series has maintained a focus on Fc receptors, and this year’s meeting will be no exception.     

2007 Keystone Symposium on Autophagy in Health and Disease

The first Keystone Symposium on Autophagy in Health and Disease was held in Monterey, a scenic city on the Pacific coast in central California, April 15-20, 2007. The symposium brought together approximately 280 participants, from basic researchers to physicians and journalists. The meeting was composed of a joint keynote session with the meeting "Apoptotic and Non-Apoptotic Cell Death Pathways" and eight plenary sessions, covering the molecular mechanisms of autophagy and many emerging concepts and functions of autophagy in organelle degradation, physiological regulation, cell death and survival, and disease. Three afternoon workshops focused on short talks selected from the posters, and a special discussion session led by experts dealt with techniques and concerns regarding experimental detection of autophagy. The symposium highlighted autophagy as a potential therapeutic target in a wide range of diseases, including cancer, microbial infection, myopathies and neurodegenerative disorders.     

Method for the calculation of the 50% effective dose of biologically active agents

A newly proposed method for the mathematical and graphic determination and calculation of ED50 (LD50) on the abscissa at the meeting point of the cumulate of dead and the cumulate of survived animals (in absolute figures) in "dose-effect) experiments is described. "The method of meeting cumulates) for the calculation of ED50 (LD50) is simple, eliminates unnecessary calculations, yields results, highly similar (95-100%) to those obtained by other methods and may be used in different medico-biological studies.