Category: Meetings/Events

In the decade since NIGMS began supporting human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, the field has made substantial strides, including the development of methods to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). As part of our ongoing commitment to basic research into the fundamental properties of pluripotent cells, we recently hosted our fourth biennial workshop for NIGMS grantees working in this research area. The 63 participants presented their latest research findings, exchanged ideas and discussed possibilities for collaboration.

The talks and posters focused on state-of-the-art hESC and iPSC research in four broad areas: pluripotency and self-renewal, technological approaches, differentiation mechanisms, and epigenetics and reprogramming. Several presentations highlighted significant advances in our understanding of the molecular complexes and signaling networks that control pluripotency and the transition to the differentiated state. As in previous workshops, it was exciting to see all the progress that has been made in the past two years.

The final session was on future directions and challenges. It included a discussion of the current state of the field and raised the important question of the nature, extent and significance of differences between hESC and iPSC. Jamie Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison reminded everyone that these two types of pluripotent cells are remarkably similar and that differences may reflect genetic differences in the original cells and/or differences arising during growth in tissue culture.

The meeting concluded with a lively discussion that highlighted the participants’ opinions on the technical challenges, resource needs and key biological questions that will drive the field in the coming years. For more on this, read the workshop summary.

A special symposium marking the 40th anniversary of the Protein Data Bank (PDB) will be held this year at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, October 28-30.

It’s quite fitting that the meeting is being held here. It was a 1971 symposium at the laboratory titled “The Structure and Function of Proteins at the Three-Dimensional Level” that led to the establishment of the PDB as a freely accessible portal for the experimentally determined structures of biological macromolecules. Since then, the PDB has grown into an international resource for structural biology, today containing nearly 75,000 structures of proteins, nucleic acids and complex assemblies.

Because it is such a vital resource for researchers, NIGMS and other parts of NIH, along with the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, have helped fund the PDB’s operation for many years. NIGMS is also a sponsor of the symposium.

The October event, which is open to all, will include presentations by many prominent scientists who have been instrumental in the development of the PDB and the field of structural biology. Among the confirmed speakers are Michael Rossmann of Purdue University, an early advocate of the PDB; Wayne Hendrickson of Columbia University, a leader in solving the structures of membrane proteins; and Kurt Wüthrich of the Scripps Research Institute and the ETH Zürich, a pioneer in NMR structure determination techniques.

A limited number of travel awards to attend the symposium are available for students and early career scientists; applications are due by
August 1.

More information about the program, registration and travel is on the meeting Web site.

At last week’s Evolution and Medicine Symposium (link no longer available) at the Evolution 2011 meeting in Norman, Oklahoma, experts from around the country came together to discuss how evolutionary biology is influencing our understanding of human health and disease.

At the meeting, I talked about NIGMS’s commitment to funding research on the principles and dynamics of evolution and highlighted the importance of studying biological systems, such as infectious diseases and physiology, in their evolutionary context.

In preparing my remarks, I realized that the work of clinicians and evolutionary biologists could be highly synergistic. M.D.s know a great deal about individual variation and clinical presentation, while evolutionary biologists have a good grasp of variation at the population level. Both of these perspectives are very valuable to the field of personalized medicine, for example. The question now is: How do we create an opportunity for these two groups to work with each other?

The meeting featured many interesting talks, including:

• Dyann Wirth of the Harvard School of Public Health explained that in the very near future we will have enough sequence data from Plasmodium, mosquitoes and humans to understand regional variation as well as co-evolution of the malaria pathogen and its hosts. We should be able to use this information to build computational models and evaluate intervention, eradication and elimination strategies. Wirth said these capabilities stem from advances in DNA sequencing technologies that are having a revolutionary effect on evolution research, including evolution and medicine.

• Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington spoke on the integration of mathematical modeling and evolution. He gave a real example of how to use antiviral drugs most effectively in an influenza outbreak. The question was how to deploy antivirals to reduce the likelihood of resistance and minimize illness and death. Bergstrom said that the answer is non-obvious unless you understand how phylogenies work and know a little bit of math.

• Angela Hancock of the University of Chicago talked about recent data showing that human genetic variation that’s adaptive in one context will not be so in other contexts. Studying 61 populations from different parts of the world, she identified signals of selection in a variety of genes related to UV radiation, infection and immunity, and cancer.

This symposium came at the perfect time to describe two new NIGMS-related efforts. We previewed an NIH high school curriculum supplement on evolution and medicine that will be released this fall. Also, in conjunction with the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we will be announcing later this summer a call for applications to study dynamic biological systems in their ecological and evolutionary contexts. I’ll share more details about these efforts in the near future.

Last week, NIGMS hosted the Frontiers in Cell Migration and Mechanotransduction meeting. It brought together an impressive group of scientists working at many levels, from molecules to cells, tissues and organs.

The overall sense from the meeting is that a wide variety of tools, approaches and even fields have converged on this topic of how and why cells move and that this convergence has become a source of collaboration between communities that historically have not interacted.

Several important themes emerged, including:

• Events, such as cell signaling, are highly localized and closely coordinated. In a fascinating talk, Klaus Hahn (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) presented new experimental data using a photoactivable and completely reversible probe that he developed for RhoG. Important in wound healing, RhoG turns on immediately at the leading edge when the cell moves and seems to regulate the direction of cell migration and whether a cell can turn.

• It’s all about forces—once invisible to most techniques that biologists have used, forces are now being deduced and measured internally. Chris Chen (University of Pennsylvania) showed us a stem cell’s response to the dish surface generates cellular forces and that these forces affect whether the cell rounds up or spreads. Chen’s data suggests that cell spreading is essential for triggering distinct differentiation pathways—and that whether a stem cell becomes a brain or a bone cell is driven by this contractility.

• Cells communicate and influence each other. In a talk that linked basic biology to clinical research, Anna Huttenlocher (University of Wisconsin-Madison) showed that leukocyte migration can be an immune response to cell wounding. By using photo-caged biosensors developed by Klaus Hahn, she found that neutrophil cells are more active and recruited more quickly after subsequent wounding events. They also recruit other cells to the wound sites.

The talks, as well as the poster session, pointed to additional conclusions: Cell migration is a collective behavior, and feedback mechanisms control many cell migration events.

This was the third and final meeting organized by the NIGMS-funded Cell Migration Consortium (CMC), whose project will sunset in August 2011. The consortium developed a cell migration gateway that will continue to exist as a resource for updates in the field; you can subscribe at http://cellmigration.org/cmg_update/ealert/signup.shtml (no longer available).

Jim Deatherage contributed to this post.