SEB Bulletin July 2006 - SEB Annual Main Meeting
University of Kent at Canterbury Monday 3rd - Friday 7th April 2006
In 2006, the SEB’s Annual Main Meeting returned to the University of Kent at Canterbury, following on from a highly successful meeting there in 2001. Although the sun didn’t shine quite as much as in Barcelona, the meeting was still a great success, attracting over 700 international delegates.
The excellent scientific programme was delivered through over 20 scientific sessions, with presentations from over 300 speakers, supported by a wide range of posters. The EPA also ran four well-attended Education and Training sessions. The programme was further enhanced by the 2006 Bidder and Woolhouse Lectures given this year by Keith Roberts from the John Innes Centre and Richard Mithen from the Institute of food research.
The Society’s Young Scientist’s were given the chance to shine at the Canterbury meeting via the Young Scientist Award Session (sponsored by Elsevier) which aims to encourage young researchers. This year’s winner was Imogen Sparkes from Oxford Brookes University. The two runner’s up were Gina Galli and Helen Rushton.
Following tradition, Presidents medals were awarded to one scientist from each section of the Society. These awards recognise the outstanding achievements of scientist at the start of their career. For the first time this year the winners gave presentations and were awarded their medals at the SEB’s formal conference dinner. The winners were Kath Sloman (University of Plymouth), John Pittman (University of Manchester) and Giles Oldroyd (The John Innes Centre).
The scientific programme was complemented by a range of networking events which provided all attendees with access to other international researchers and an opportunity to forge links with future collaborators. On the opening evening the delegation were treated to a Kentish supper and entertained by stilt walking minstrels – the only draw back was that the exhibition hall still smelt of barbeques the next day!
The SEB wine trail proved as popular as ever – although we were a little unsure if, having consumed rather a lot of wine, the winners were aware they had had a fruit tree planted on their behalf in Africa! The meeting would not have been a success without the hard work of the venue staff and the student helpers who did an excellent job in ensuring all went smoothly. Equally, a big thank you is owed to the session organisers, speakers and delegates who all contributed vital components of the scientific programme. We hope that all involved enjoyed the meeting as much as we did and we look forward to welcoming everyone to next Annual Main Meeting at the SECC in Glasgow next April.
Kate Steel, Nancy Baines, Chris Trimmer SEB Main Office
Women in Science Dinner
The Wife of Science’s Tale
Wommen, of kynde, desiren libertee,
Women by nature love their liberty,
And nat to been constreyned as a thral;
And not to be constrained like any thrall,
And so doon men, if I sooth seyen shal.
And so do men, if say the truth I shall.
As Chaucer makes clear in his Franklin’s tale, rewarding relationships need equal partners if they’re going to last. The relationship between women and science hasn’t always reached that ideal and on Tuesday evening female scientists of all ages had a chance to compare their own Canterbury Tales at the SEB’s now-traditional ‘Women in Science’ dinner organised by Prof. Christine Foyer (Rothamsted Research) SEB’s External Affairs officer Sarah Blackford. The focus of the evening was an afterdinner talk by Professor Anna Rychter of the University of Warsaw, who forswore her mitochondrial research to remind and reproach us; reminding us that science can be a vocation regardless of gender, but reproaching us with the increasing under-representation of women as the career ladder is scaled. As an eye-opening evening, the dinner was as instructive and important as any of the scientific sessions and an important reminder that biology, for all its aspirations, is as much about human endeavour as Chaucer’s 600 year old stories.
John Bothwell
Plymouth Marine Biological Association
Student Poster Assessment Workshop
During the recent SEB conference held at the University in Canterbury, an educational poster session was organised for a group of postgraduate students from the Department of Biosciences at the University of Kent. During this educational session, run by Dr Jeremy Pritchard and Sarah Blackford from the SEB, the students were primarily asked to consider how does one successfully communicate science through a poster presentation? In particular, what makes a good poster, how do you structure a poster, what is the message the poster is trying to get across, and who is the audience? After a brief discussion on these issues, the students were asked to judge and rank a number of posters covering a range of subjects from those at the conference, and to highlight ‘best practice’ and ‘not so good practice’ in scientific poster presentations. The students all found this an extremely useful exercise, particularly judging posters in which they had no expertise, and agreed that the exercise would stand them in good stead when required to produce their own posters. After the poster session the students were free to attend oral sessions at the conference, and the majority took this opportunity to sample a number of presentations throughout the day. Thanks go to Sarah Blackford and the SEB for organising this successful event.
Mark Smales
University of Kent
Poster Winners 2006
Cell Section - Graham Wright (Edinburgh) C1.3 Optical Tweezer Micromanipulation of filamentous
Animal Section – Nina Schaller A7.27 Preliminary Analysis of toe function in walking ostriches
Plant Section – Xiaodong Xie (Lancaster) P3 The identification of genes involved in the stomatal response to altered atmospheric humidity.
Problems at the SEB!
A journey through the human body in an atom sized spaced ship where 
you encounter glycine molecules, giant blood cells and more…If you were given this Hollywood script, how would you judge its scientific accuracy? This was one of the many engaging Problem Based Learning tutorials we were challenged with at the PBL workshop.
Sarah Symons, LeAP, University of Leicester gave a thought provoking insight into this novel way of teaching, where students work in groups to solve real world like problems, that are open ended with no correct solution. The problem requires the student to actively acquire new knowledge, collaborate and make decisions.
Real life uses of PBL for teaching purposes were provided by Jeremy Pritchard, University of Birmingham who presented an overview of a Bioinformatics resource he has developed for schools and with potential for undergraduate use. This online resource introduces students to some important on-line bioinformatics packages, and examines how gene function can be predicted from DNA sequence. The potential outcomes can be developed into areas such as stress biology and evolution.
Some good examples on how to enhance student engagement through using news stories were presented by Chris Wilmott, University of Leicester. News stories such as the Hwang cloning scandal, bird flu and Herceptin not only provoked some lively discussions at the workshop, but clearly have the potential to act as hooks to engage students into basic bioscience concepts and bioethical implications.
PBL as a teaching technique looks set to become an important teaching tool and I will be carefully watching developments in this area. We hope to include some PBL tutorials in the Gatsby Plants Teaching Resource, which will be piloted in September 2006.
Aurora Levesley Gatsby
Plants Teaching Development Administrative Officer
Centre for Plant Sciences, University of Leeds
Genomics and Systems Biology
In the Keynes complex at the University of Canterbury experts in the generation and analysis of highthroughput data mixed with computational biologists, novices, and casual observers to contemplate Genomics and Systems Biology.
Mark Stitt opened the session showing that, although microarrays provide a lot of data, they don’t necessarily reflect the protein content of cells. His data suggests that cells transcribe RNA in anticipation of future scenarios, but protein levels and activity (in this case measured using enzyme assays) are regulated independently of RNA levels. Insights into post-transcriptional control included Pam Green’s (Delaware) update on the roles and significance of small RNAs (an impressive 75,000 in the Arabidopsis genome and 150,000 in rice), and Ji-Young Li’s (Duke) discovery that the expression patterns of 6 out of 24 root transcription factor proteins are affected by cell-to-cell movement. Studies of protein levels are increasingly important. Wilhelm Gruissem (ETH Zurich) showed how PeptideAtlas is bringing the full Arabidopsis proteome a step closer.
New components were reported for a wide range of processes (Patrick Armengaud, Glasgow; Jane Griffiths, Rothamsted; Murray Grant, Imperial; Alex Marshall, Nottingham, and David Brown, Manchester). Technical challenges and innovations included a successful high-throughput chemical genetic screen (Peter McCourt, Toronto), which has identified a new regulator of Arabidopsis germination similar to the parasitic plant regulators orobanchol and strigol, and the use of laser capture microdissection (Keith Lindsay, Durham) to transcriptionally profile specific tissues within the developing embryo.
Having discovered the components of biological systems, we need to find out how they fit together, and which of their properties are most important for function. Many speakers described bioinformatic tools (including Wilhelm Gruissem, Peter McCourt, and Liisa Holm, Helsinki), some of which can be used to identify and characterise networks of interacting genes. Others described how a variety of mathematical and computational approaches can be used to test and suggest hypotheses about biological mechanisms (Marcus Tindall, Oxford; Andrew Millar, Edinburgh; Malcolm Bennett, Nottingham). This was exemplified by Dennis Bray’s (Cambridge) talk on signalling mechanisms during chemotaxis in Escherichia coli. This system has been defined down to the average number and location of molecules of a protein in a typical cell at a given time. Both elegant and intellectually satisfying, this talk showed why so many people are excited by the prospect of precise, quantitative modelling of biological systems.
Heartfelt thanks to the sponsors Taylor and Francis and the BBSRC, and to Ruth Bastow and Andrew Millar, who advised on speaker selection, Sarah Blackford, who ran the associated Bioinformatics Workshop, and the excellent speakers and session chairs.
Looking forward to the oncoming challenges, has there ever been a better time to be a biologist?
Gordon Breen and Claire Grierson
University of Bristol
What’s in a sequence?
In the joint Genomics/Education workshop held at SEB@Canterbury, Professor Terri Attwood (University of Manchester) aimed to de-mystify the field of bioinformatics through the use of EMBER – A European Multimedia Bioinformatics Educational Resource (http://www.ember.man.ac.uk). It is hard to escape from the fact that computing and mathematics are becoming increasingly important components of biological studies; with whole genome sequencing progressing apace, data-mining is a powerful research tool. But where do you begin? With an attendance from postdoctoral to senior researcher level, it was obvious that information is needed by those just entering this subject area, and by those wanting to ensure that of the multitude of programs available they found the one which was most appropriate for their research needs.
The workshop was titled “Introduction to Bioinformatics” and began with a formal presentation of key issues to ensure that everyone got the most from the subsequent practical session, in which we got to discover the secrets of an “unkown DNA sequence” by working on-line through the EMBER tutorial. With the increasing availability of genome data the term “bioinformatics” has evolved so that it currently refers to sequence data analysis, modelling and pattern recognition. In a well-structured course we learnt that about the myths and pitfalls of sequence analysis, and the “holy grail of bioinformatics”: the ability to predict protein functionality from sequence data alone. Touching on more practical matters we had to consider the different types of databases in more detail. Adding descriptors to entries can seriously affect the efficiency with which sequence information could be added to databases and thus it is tempting to ask “does annotation matter?”. The answer seems to be yes, if you need to know the relationship within protein families that is, and then something like Swiss- Prot is suitable. If however you need the most up-todate comparison, then a primary sequence deposition database such as TrEMBL is more appropriate.
One of the most important lessons from the workshop has to be that even though it may be perceived as a silicon world, there is no substitute for scientific interpretation in bioinformatics. Computer-derived similarity figures can not stand alone, they must be interpreted and sequence homology inferred. And, it is only with this understanding that informed decisions about the biological significance of any new sequences can be reliably made.
Alison Kingston-Smith
IGER, Aberystwyth
Developments in Plant Biology
The group of sessions held under the banner of ‘Developments in Plant Biology’ was designed specifically to offer an opportunity for young researchers, at both the PhD and early postdoctoral levels, to present their work and also provided a forum for established researchers to talk about unpublished work. Overall this was a very successful programme with approx 30 talks spread over 5 sessions covering the topic areas; metabolism, development and environment. The quality of the presentations in these 5 sessions was outstanding, demonstrating that high quality plant research is alive and well in both the UK and continental Europe. The sessions were very well attended (with the exception of Friday pm) and it was particularly pleasing to see many of the speakers continuing to attend all of the sessions.
Given the success of this year’s programme it is planned to continue with Developments in Plant Biology next year. As happened this year all of the talks for this group of sessions, for the Annual SEB meeting to be held in Glasgow 2007, will be selected from submitted abstracts. Please encourage young researchers in you labs to offer talks in this session and, don’t forget, if you have some new data you want to share there will also talk slots available for established researchers!
Christine Raines
University of Essex
Animal Section Report
The SEB returned to Canterbury this year - a hard act to follow after the excellent meeting at Barcelona. Nonetheless, the animal section picked up the challenge with 13 sessions at Canterbury, in addition to the joint section session. The science was, as ever, well presented and of a high standard. The scientific debate was lively and informative. The social events were also great opportunities to network. The Kentish food was an interesting idea that allowed people to network, have fun, and try some traditional foods. The evening worked well and I would encourage the SEB to try this again in the future. There were a couple of “experiments” at this years meeting. Firstly, the joint section meeting on water transport. This was well attended and showed the true multi-disciplinary nature of the SEB. We would like to extend our thanks to the organisers, Martin Grosell, David Evans, and Deri Tomos. Plans are in place for another joint section event next year. The other “experiment” was moving the president’s medals talks to the conference dinner. This really tested the mettle of the candidatesgiving talks to an audience after dinner! The idea of combining the medals with the dinner is a good one, we probably need to refine it a little more for next year.
The animal section is planning now for Glasgow 2007. The programme is packed with some very timely science and promises to be an outstanding meeting.
Richard Handy
Animal Section Secretary
Goal-directed limb movements
Goal-directed limb movements are intrinsic to many behaviours in animals ranging from insects to humans. Making such movements requires the solution of problems as diverse as coping with redundant degrees of freedom, planning and controlling hand or foot trajectories, integrating biomechanical properties of the limb, and compensating for postural changes that affect balance. An important goal of current neuroscience research is to develop an understanding of the sensory-motor transformations that underlie these movements. A comparative approach can reveal general principles of limb movement control, because animals as different as an octopus, a locust or a cat must all solve the same problems but their limbs and the corresponding nervous control mechanisms have evolved independently from each other.
Our session brought together leading researchers who dealt with topics that spanned across model systems (insects, molluscs, primates, carnivores) and methods (neurophysiology, behavioural physiology, biomechanics and modelling). A morning session of 6 invited talks was followed by an afternoon session of 3 submitted talks and a general discussion.
In the first talk of the morning session, Binyamin (Benny) Hochner (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) described the control of goal directed movements in the flexible arm of the octopus. These remarkable cephalopod molluscs use quite different control strategies when reaching for a target and retrieving an object towards the mouth. During retrieval, the arm forms almost static bends that act rather like joints, and thus reduce the effective degrees of freedom of the movement. Tom Matheson (University of Leicester) described the plasticity of aimed scratching movements made by locusts, and demonstrated how high levels of joint stiffness can facilitate load compensation. Paul Gribble (University of Western Ontario) addressed the complex question of how the human CNS represents joint interaction torques that arise from movements of multiply articulated limbs. Trevor Drew (University of Montreal) provided evidence that the neural mechanisms used to control reaching in cats may have developed from those used to control locomotion. Volker Dürr (University of Bielefeld) presented a model that synthesises stepping, searching and reaching movements in an insect, demonstrating that aspects of all such movements can in principle be generated by a single control network. Tamar Flash (Weizmann Institute of Science) provided a wide-ranging talk on computational issues in motor control, and rounded off the session by returning us to the control of octopus arms.
After lunch, Harald Wolf (University of Ulm) demonstrated how inhibitory motor neurones of arthropods are essential elements of motor control; Till Bockemühl (University of Bielefeld) described how human catching movements can be broken down using principal components analysis to reveal motor synergies; and Martina Rieger (MPI Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences) reminded us that different types of goal representation (e.g. temporal versus spatial goals) have marked effects on movement kinematics.
All of the talks were well attended by an appreciative audience, and feedback about the session was uniformly very positive. A general discussion provided a friendly and valuable forum for the development of some interesting ideas, some of which were mulled over at more length during a very enjoyable evening meal attended by all of the contributors. A number of posters associated with our symposium generated considerable discussion during the main poster session.
Generous funding provided by the Company of Biologists (through the SEB), The Physiological Society, and the German Zoological Society (DZG) enabled us to support all of our invited speakers, to award travel grants to two students who presented posters and to the three selected presenters of submitted talks. By general consensus, we intend to develop the theme of goal-directed limb movements in future SEB meetings, at which we will provide better opportunities for integration with the Society’s already strong biomechanics sessions.
Tom Matheson
University of Leicester
Osmoregulation Group
Two sessions at Canterbury were of most interest to members of the Osmoregulation group – The Ion Regulation and Ion Sensing and Water Transport session. Both sessions were well attended, despite the number of delegates for the meeting being down on previous years, this was especially true for the Water transport session that was a joint section symposium. I thank Martin Grosell for organising the Animal part of this session. I understand that platform presenters from this session will contribute to a special volume in CBP. We have proposed two sessions for next year’s Glasgow meeting: Fish Welfare: Integrating behaviour and physiology – Kath Sloman, Nic Bury and Rod Wilson; and Cell culture techniques for invertebrate and piscine physiology and toxicological studies – Nic Bury and Richard Handy, and a General Animal Biology session. The Osmoregulation group AGM was held on Monday and unfortunately clashed with the SEB AGM. Consequently, a select group was present, but ideas for Marseille include linking with the strong endocrine/osmoregulation group at Villefranche. Kath Sloman is the osmoregulation group deputy and was proposed to take over the group chair from Nic Bury at the 2007 annual meeting at the end of Nic’s 3 years as group convenor.
Nic Bury Convenor
University of Exeter
The role of thermal environment in stress adaptation and tolerance
Integration of multiple stressors
Thermal physiology has respectable history at SEB meetings, which befits the long-standing recognition of environmental temperature as a key environmental factor affecting physiology of all organisms – from bacteria to mammals. The session entitled “The role of thermal environment in stress adaptation and tolerance: Integration of multiple stressors” organized by Inna Sokolova (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) and Hans Pörtner (Alfred-Wegener Institute) in Canterbury this year took a new approach to the old question by focusing on the ways how thermal environment is integrated in stress response and stress tolerance. It would be fair to say that today we witness a Renaissance of thermal physiology due to the increasing evidence of global climate change and our awareness of the widespread effects of temperature change on distribution and survival of wildlife populations. As often as not these changes are not due to the lethal effects of the temperature itself, but rather to the indirect effects of the changing thermal environment on organisms’ susceptibility to other biotic and abiotic stressors.
This session brought together researchers from different backgrounds in an attempt to synthesize the fascinating and up-to-date data about the role of thermal environment in physiological responses to a variety of stressors including hypoxia, CO2 levels, pollution, pathogens and disease, and food shortage in a variety of model organisms - from Drosophila and oysters to fish and turtles. Peter Frappell (La Trobe University), Don Jackson (Brown University) and John Lighton (University of Nevada Las Vegas) started discussions by demonstrating intricate connections between temperature and oxygen availability in determining ventilatory and metabolic responses of a variety of terrestrial and aquatic animals, and the potential conflicts which may arise when temperature and hypoxia call for opposite responses. Their stimulating talks showed not only that hypoxia tolerance depends on the environmental temperature, but also that preferred or tolerated temperatures depend on the environmental oxygen concentration. Other speakers pointed out that thermal environment can also modulate responses to new (from the evolutionary standpoint) stressors such as anthropogenic pollutants. Inna Sokolova (UNC Charlotte) and Christophe Minier (University of Le Havre) showed that elevated temperature may strongly increase susceptibility to pollutants either due to the direct effects on energy metabolism and mitochondrial physiology or indirectly, due to the changes in expression of protective proteins mediated by temperature-dependent food availability. Very appropriately, the session was concluded by adding evolutionary perspective to the temperature-mediated effects on stress response in the engaging talks by Volker Loeschcke (Aarhus University) and Trish Schulte (University of British Columbia), who showed how differences in gene expression and the resulting physiology and biochemistry due to temperature adaptations may affect organisms’ resistance to other, seemingly unrelated stressors such as starvation or pollutants. Finally, Keith Brander (ICES Copenhagen) used multivariate ecological approach to emphasize how taking into account various temperaturedependent environmental players such as food availability and predators’ pressure would be crucial in our understanding of temperature-dependent trends of field populations. The poster session continued the topic by showing further connections between thermal environment and organisms’ susceptibility to environmental pollutants, diseases and potentially even their dietary requirements!
Overall, the SEB meeting in general and this session in particular has been very successful as well as fun. The relaxed and friendly atmosphere of SEB aided in no small degree by the Wine Trail, Mungo’s Bar Disco and the proximity of excellent pubs was very conducive to informal scientific discussions, which provided fruitful follow-ups to the formal session. All of the speakers have commented on the excellent organization of the meeting, and I would like to join them by thanking Chris Trimmer, Nancy Baines and the rest of the team at SEB for taking care of all the organizational things big and small, for their talent for turning potential nightmares of session organizers into a piece of cake, and to congratulate them on yet another successful meeting.
Inna Sokolova
University of North Carolina at Charlotte USA
Respiration Group
The sessions at Canterbury went very well, and were well-attended. David McKenzie has taken over from Tobias Wang as convenor. Tobias Wang did a great job as convenor, and things went very well under his tenure. In particular, Tobias raised the profile of the General Animal Biology session, which has attracted increasing interest. The Respiration group has proposed three topical sessions for the Glasgow meeting.
• “Freeze tolerance in animals” will last for one day and be organised by Mark Bayley, Johannes Overgaard, Martin Holmstrup (Aarhus, DK) and Hans Ramløv (Rostoff, DK.).
• “Integrative red blood cell functions: oxygen sensing and regulation of local blood flow” will last for one day and be organised by Frank Jensen (Odense, DK) and Michael Berenbrink (Liverpool).
• “Cardiac adaptations to temperature change” will last for 1.5 days and be organized by Holly Shiels and Gina Galli (Manchester).
• In addition the group will also promote the General Animal Biology Session. It should last for 2 full days.
David McKenzie
Convenor
Neurobiology Group Report
The annual meeting at Canterbury was very successful and offered very different sessions to recent years. The success of the session was very much down to the organisers Tom Matheson (University of Leicester, UK), Volker Dürr (University of Bielefeld, Germany) and Tracey Newman and Amritpal Mudher (University of Southampton, UK).
Tom Matheson and Voker Dürr organised the A10 session on ‘Goal-directed Limb Movements’. What was particularly exciting about this session was that Tom and Volker brought together people whose research focussed on a range of model systems, from invertebrates to vertebrates. The talks revealed how, despite independent evolution, the limbs of different animal groups share many general principles of movement control. The general consensus at the end of the day was to aim to develop this theme of research at future SEB meeting with the hope of integrating it with the biomechanics sessions. Good luck Tom and Volker with your ambitious plans for the future.
The second Neurobiology session (A11) was organised by Tracey Newman and Amritpal Mudher and their session on ‘Genes – Function – Disease; Lessons from Drosophila’ generated a great deal of interest, especially given the Teaching and Learning Resource article by Sarah Blackford on the theme of the meeting in the last Bulletin. The session highlighted the importance of studies on Drosophila, and advances made, in understanding human neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntingdon’s and Multiple Sclerosis. The final discussion of the session outlined the hopes that the group could continue to develop and build on this theme at future SEB meetings.
That brings me nicely to the next meeting in Glasgow in 2007 where I will be co-organising a two-day session on invertebrate gustation and nutrition. Plans are still at an early stage but we have already attracted a number of speakers including Frederic Marion- Poll (Versaille, France), Sylwester Chyb (Canberra, Australia) and Teichii Tanimura (Japan). We also plan to continue with the model of having a general neurobiology poster session.
Finally, if you have any ideas for future SEB sessions please do not hesitate to contact me (pln@soton. ac.uk) or Tom Matheson (tm75@le.ac.uk).
Phil Newland
University of Southampton
General Biomechanics in Canterbury
the winners are...
Despite the fact that the number of submissions was less than what we usually get (maybe, the very successful Barcelona-meeting was too recent for some of us), I believe we had again a very successful General Biomechanics session with many excellent contributions.
This is amongst others reflected in the high quality of the winning talks and posters. We decided, not only to go on with the initiative we took in Barcelona, but also to do even better. Instead of giving one prize for the best poster and one for the best talk, we gave this year three poster awards and three prizes for the best talks. According to the jury, the best poster was presented by E. Gorb (MPI Stuttgart) on surface properties and adhesion in beetles. The second best poster dealt with the foot structure and scaling in elephants and was presented by C. Millar (RVC London). The third poster prize was for N. Schaller (Senckenberg RI) on toe function in walking ostriches. For the talks, the jury unanimously agreed that the talk by S. Combes (Berkeley UC) on the limits to maximal flight velocity in insects was outstanding. Therefore, she was the winner of the first prize. Yet, also the talks by S. Gorb (MPI Stuttgart; on walking on a smooth ceiling) and G. Lichtwark (RVC London; on optimal tendon compliance) were well appreciated. They received the second and third prize, respectively. Congratulations to all these participants. I hope to see you all again next spring!
Peter Aerts
Group Convenor
Living with and without oxygen
A tribute to Peter Lutz
This two day session was dedicated to Professor Peter Lutz, who passed away in February 2005 after a brief struggle with cancer. Originally a Scotsman (and always a Scotsman!), Peter earned a PhD from the University of Glasgow, which was followed by a postdoctoral position at Duke University in the laboratory of Knut Schmidt-Nielsen. Following a lectureship at Bath University, Peter moved to Florida in the mid 1970’s where he first worked at the University of Miami (eventually becoming Chairman of Marine Biology and Fisheries at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science) and subsequently held an Endowed Chair as the McGinty Eminent Scholar in Marine Biology at Florida Atlantic University. Peter was a leader within the field of comparative physiology, with a special focus on hypoxia tolerance. However, he had wide interests ranging from osmoregulation to diving and respiratory physiology, to neurobiology.
The topic of this session reflected Peter’s interests and the speakers included some of the most prominent of Peter’s colleagues and friends in his favorite scientific fields. Thus, on Thursday, Ted Taylor (UK) got the session started on the right note with a spiritual and humoristic talk about Peter and his scientific contributions, particularly to anoxia tolerance. The chairman took the opportunity to point out one of Peter’s less well known contributions to humanity: the patented invention of a semi-permeable contraceptive device. Subsequently, Ken Storey (Canada) electrified and enlightened us discussing molecular adaptations to hypoxia.
After the coffee break, Dan Warren (USA) took on the heroic task of giving Phil Bickler’s talk on the role of intracellular Ca2+ in the survival of hypoxic neurons, and Donald Jackson (USA) did an excellent job explaining how turtles can handle enormous lactate loads during prolonged anoxia. Sarah Milton and Howard Prentice from Peter’s research group covered various neural and molecular aspects of anoxic survival in turtles, thereby ensuring us that turtle research is alive and well at Florida Atlantic University. David Jones (Canada) touched on Peter’s interest in sea turtles by discussing thermoregulation and exercise in leatherbacks, while Tobias Wang (Denmark) entertained us with his deep insights into the circulatory adaptations to hypoxia in reptiles.
Later in the evening, Peter, with some practical help from his friends, bought the first 100 pints in the bar (A number of stories, somehow, revolved around Peter and pubs….). A significant number of Peter’s friends still managed to turn up Friday morning for Tony Farrell’s (Canada) inspired talk about a magic number (0.7) and the heart as a working model to explore anoxic survival. Steve Perry (Canada) followed up with the latest information on hypoxia tolerance in fish in general and zebrafish in particular. After coffee, we had the pleasure of hearing award winning Katherine Sloman (UK) talk about tidepool sculpins in hypoxia. She was followed by Christine Coutrier’s (France) presentation of the consequences of reduced water oxygenation on growth performance of sole. Last out before lunch was Göran Nilsson (Norway) who explained to a hungry audience that the crucian carp is a truly extraordinary fish. Later on Friday it was the mammalian people’s turn to excite us with three excellent talks. Joe LaManna (USA) disclosed the vascular responses of the hypoxic mammalian brain, while Mike Fedak (UK) talked with great enthusiasm and at some length about giant diving seals as explorers of the ocean. Finally, Keith Webster (USA) impressed us all with his talk on molecular mechanisms of hypoxia and acid-induced apoptosis in the heart, and how his studies on one of the “death factors” may lead to new cancer therapies. We were all very pleased about how well this homage to Peter turned out, attracting not only excellent speakers, but also an enthusiastic audience, who together did a good job celebrating Peter’s memory. Peter’s spirit was most certainly felt, and our only regret was that Peter himself was unable to attend in person.
Goran Nilsson
University of Oslo
Perspectives and Developments in Fish Swimming and Bird Flight
A Tribute to John Videler
At the Annual SEB meeting in Canterbury, John Videler was seen off by 14 speakers at a timely symposium (his retirement commenced on the exact day of the symposium) with presentations on John’s two main research topics, fish swimming and bird locomotion, which John had set out to study in order to understand it all by the time he retires. In the spirit of John’s research, which successfully combined the inspiring with the controversial and the fun of observing with the hard science of measuring, each speaker rose to the challenge in his or her own way of ‘daring to stick their neck out’ to present new developments and formulate new challenges in fish swimming and bird flight.
Paul Webb started off the morning session, pointing out that fish rarely swim in that environment favoured by fish biomechanists, the turbulence-free flow. Then Lee Fuiman and Ulrike Müller explained the problems of the relatively syrupy environment fish larvae have to deal with. Melina Hale and Talitha van der Meulen had every one transfixed when showing the possibilities offered by studying mutant fish to understand muscular development and neural control of locomotion. Johan van Leeuwen made (model) muscles grow and develop while we watched and Paolo Domenici went back to what the fish do with those muscles in real life. The session’s speakers regularly also challenged the guest in honour. Talitha van der Meulen pointed out that not only embryos need mechanical stimulation and movement to get fit, but that it has been shown to be beneficial also to the more mature specimens.
The afternoon was dedicated to birds, starting off with flow in the far and wide around birds and Anders Hedenstrom arguing against fixed gaits in bird flight, to then ‘swiftly’ zoom in on what happens on the wing itself as presented by Eize Stamhuis, followed by some head-spinning footage made by an eagle, or rather its onboard camera, given to us by Adrian Thomas and Graham Taylor. Richard Bonser related feather stiffness to mechanical demand and Sophia Engel made us dive deeper into doubly labelled water and flight energetics. The meeting ended as turbulent as it started with Jim Usherwood telling us all about the pitfalls of our favourite friend, the convenient factor α (or some such guise), that appears in many an equation purporting to provide a full and analytical understanding of a biomechanical problem.
When John ended the meeting, we all concluded that despite our best efforts, we still don’t know everything about how fish swim and how birds fly before John retires, and what a good thing that is, because it means that there is still loads of fun to be had at many SEB conferences to come.
Eize J. Stamhuis
University of Groningen
Advances in cellular micromanipulation
Both the Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) and the SEB are committed to promoting techniques at the forefront of cell biology and to making researchers widely aware of the opportunities those techniques bring. Advances in cellular micromanipulation, organised by Imogen Sparkes and David Evans for the SEB and Susan Brooks for the RMS, gave insights into three major sets of techniques- those grouped around the use of light to cut and capture; those using laser light to trap and move; and those using ultrafine capillaries to sample single cells. In each case, down-stream processing of the samples was also considered- as it is equally important to be able to analyse single cell quantities as to isolate them.
Talks gave insights both into the techniques and upand down- stream processing with animal, plant and fungal biology included. Graeme Murray, who gave a key-note address and whose co-edited volume on the range of laser microdissection techniques is published by Humana, presented the range of equipment and techniques available for laser capture microdissection while Keith Lindsey described its use in isolating cell zones in plant embryogenesis. Laser microdissection was demonstrated for plant and animal tissue with the PALM system demonstrated by Zeiss Image recognition software and the possibility of multiple capture meant that the system could be left to run while thousands of identical cells were selected as illustrated by Julia Kehr’s talk. Use of a laser to move and capture objects was discussed by Hanna Jankevics and demonstrated by Graham Wright and Nick Read from Edinburgh with an example of technology transfer and spin-out. Their system, to be marketed by Cosmic, was a comparatively simple ‘bolt on’ using one port of a standard research microscope, but capable of capturing and moving cellular structures for a variety of applications. Delegates quickly gained competence in the system during the Thursday afternoon demonstrations. Leica also were available to give information on their systems. While picolitre sampling was not demonstrated, its applications were thoroughly presented in talks by Roger Leigh, Carol Wagstaff and Deri Tomos.
While most of the session dealt with micro-dissection and microsampling, a final talk, by Camelia Dijkstra of Nottingham added a further dimension to micromanipulating cells; magnetic levitation. Overall, this first SEB-RMS link-up of recent times led to a very profitable session and it is hoped that joint sessions will be a regular feature of future meetings.
David Evans, Imogen Sparkes
and Susan Brooks
SEB and RMS
