| BOLD Meeting at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology |
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4th - 6th May 2011 at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, GermanyOverview of all locations, map and contact details (PDF) Joint BOLD ZF-HEALTH MeetingKIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) was chosen for the third BOLD meeting. On this occasion, the focus was on “cutting edge technologies in biomedical research”. The choice for the place was not a coincidence since KIT is one of the largest science and technology institutions in Germany. This time our meeting included the members of ZF-HEALTH consortium (Zebrafish Regulomics for Human Health) and external participants. ZF-HEALTH is a large-scale integrating project funded by the EU, which aims to utilize high-throughput phenotyping of at least a thousand zebrafish mutants relevant to human disease. In total more than ninety participants attended this meeting including BOLD fellows and PIs, members of ZF-HEALTH and external attendees. The meeting boasted a number of distinguished oversees speakers including those from Harvard University and UCSF. Day 0Day 0 started after midday and was divided into two sections. Initially, a short introduction to their projects (that included academic background and personal interests) was given by all meeting participants. Finally, four BOLD fellows (those that had been in post for at least one year) had to present their project results. All other fellows presented their projects in poster sessions over the 3 days of the meeting. The fellows’ platform presentations were of excellent quality and included:
At the end of day 0, fellows visited the KIT campus (some preferred to do sightseeing in Karlsruhe city), while the PIs had a board meeting. Finally, all participants had dinner at the restaurant Badisch Brauhaus. Day 1Day 1 of the meeting focused on “high content screening” and “latest technologies in microscopy and phenotype assay” in the morning and afternoon sessions, respectively. There was a poster session and oral presentations given by invited external experts as follows:
During these talks, the audience could appreciate the advantages of using zebrafish as a model to perform high-throughput screenings analyzing simple in vivo phenomena, as shown with a behavioral screen to look for novel psychotropic compounds by Dr. Peterson. But this is only possible to achieve by the use of cutting edge technologies and by efficient data acquisition, analysis and image processing, described in the rest of the talks. As an example of this, we could mention the impressive videos of zebrafish embryo development (through light sheet microscopy) shown by Dr. Wittbrodt or the intelligent microscopes described by Dr. Liebel. The session was closed with an interesting talk about animal ethics in science by Dr. Mueller and with the presentation of Dr. Strahle, in which he shared his personal experience in research management including the big responsibility of directing a huge institute. At the end of the day, after the discussion of the BOLD fellows Personal Development Plans, the group had dinner at the typical German restaurant Badische Weinstube. Day 2Day 2 of the meeting was focused on “cutting edge molecular technologies – second/third generation sequencing and data integration”. For this day, besides the last poster session, the following speakers presented:
Computational biology is a science discipline implicated in the development and application of theoretical methods to analyze large data sets, using different mathematical models, with the aim of studying biological systems. Since the exponential increase in latest technologies (and consequently, in complexity of data analysis) during the recent years, it became evident how important is the role of bioinformatics in investigations that involves large-scale analysis (such as ChIP seq, RNA seq, CAGE). For this reason, at the end of the first talk, it was highly recommended to learn more about this area for the improvement of fellows’ personal development. As a molecular cutting edge technology, we had the privilege of listening to Dr Joung’s presentation of his work on method development in engineered zinc finger nucleases field. These enzymes are efficient molecular tools that target specific DNA sequences, introducing modification in the genome using the action of the endogenous DNA repair machinery which becomes switched on after the generation of the double strand breaks. The following two talks were related to pancreas development and/or function, associated also with disease: First, the identification of new genes involved in diabetes using SNP association studies by Dr. Frayling and then, the study of gluconeogenesis modulators, and the mechanism of b-cells generation by duct multipotent progenitor cells by Dr. Stainier. For the last talk of the meeting, Dr. Liebel presented his take on use of different websites in which fellows can find valuable and diverse information for the development of their projects, and even for communication with each other through scientific social networks. Some of the websites recommended are given below: |