Workshops archive
The Cytoskeletal Road to Neuronal Function
15 – 18 April 2024, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
The cytoskeleton is a key structure of every living cell. In eukaryotes, microtubule and actin filaments are ubiquitous cytoskeletal elements which are adapted to perform a multitude of different functions. Neurons are particularly dependent on their cytoskeleton which plays key roles spanning from neuronal differentiation and migration, through axonal trafficking and synapse formation, to neurodegeneration and cell death. In this Workshop we will b ...How Global South Research Can Shape the Future of Comparative Physiology
10 - 13 March 2024, Skukuza conference centre, Kruger National Park, South Africa
Comparative physiology, a discipline of physiology that exploits the understanding of how different animals function, provides the critical link to understand how organismal performance determines geographical distributions of animals. The many exquisite adaptations to extreme environments also provide valuable animal models to understand disease mechanisms and contribute to understanding drivers for major evolutionary transitions. With rapid habitat loss and climate change, we ar ...Effectively Communicating Bioimage Analysis
12–15 February 2024, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
Bioimage analysis is a critically needed discipline, especially as the number of new tools is exploding as part of the "deep learning revolution" and as larger data sizes and automated screening systems make manual data handling of microscopy data increasingly impractical. While there are more educational and training materials than ever, a few major challenges still exist: Bioimage analysis is still often seen as an "add-on" - not required a ...Single Cell View 3D Genome Architecture
26-29 November 2023, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
The 3-dimensional (3D) folding of the genome sequence inside the eukaryotic nucleus is tightly linked to cell function and identity. For that reason, deciphering the rules that govern 3D genome architecture is currently an important challenge facing biology. Determining genome architecture at the level of looping DNA-to-DNA interactions and/or phase separated compartments will allow us to better investigate structure-function relationships. The potent ...Inside Out: New Frontiers in the Comparative Physiology of the Vertebrate Gut
25-28 June 2023, Eastwell Manor, Kent, UK
This Workshop will bring together experts from a wide range of disciplines to examine the functioning of the vertebrate gastro-intestinal tract though the lens of integrative physiology. Until recently, the gut was the poor relation to other exchange sites with the environment (lungs, gills, and kidneys) in terms of scientific investigation. Indeed, it received scant attention from most comparative physiologists apart from the routine (but questionable) practice of starving their test ani ...Novel Technologies for Programming Human Cell Fate - March 2023
26 - 29 March 2023, Eastwell Manor, Kent, UK
The reprogramming field has been firmly established, where we now have the capability of engineering a variety of cell identities. However, the protocols to generate target cell types are often inefficient and lack fidelity, with the engineered cells not fully recapitulating target identity. Previous studies aiming to assess and improve cell engineering were challenged by the cellular heterogeneity arising during reprogramming. Now, with recent technological and ...Collective Cell Migration: From In Vitro to In Vivo
19-22 February 2023, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
Collective cell migration has paramount importance for embryogenesis, tissue repair and cancer progression. This phenomenon spans from the microscopic, molecular scale of cell signalling and cell-cell interactions, to the macroscopic, tissue-level scale of multicellular dynamics, and is amenable to both experimental and theoretical investigations. Collective cell migration is distinctly different from single cell migration in terms of its biological complexity and theoretical trea ...Toxic Metabolites in the Biology of Ageing and Cancer
4 - 7 December 2022, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
Toxic metabolites in our metabolism, diet and in pollution have a major impact on human health. For example, alcohol and sugar toxic metabolites contribute to global mortality, ageing, diabetes, neurodegeneration and cancer. In the past decade, there has been a transformation in our understanding of how toxic metabolites contribute to ageing and disease - where they come from, how organisms protect themselves against them, and how their accumulation can damage cert ...Genotype to Phenotype: Bridging Comparative Genomics and Cell Biology
13-16 November, 2022, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
Enabled by the plummeting costs of sequencing and greatly improved analytical tools, today’s cell biologists have an unprecedented opportunity to place decades of model systems research within a comparative, evolutionary framework. However, we lack the ability to accurately map genotype to phenotype. Is it possible to accurately infer or predict cellular morphology, dynamics and function from genomic data? Moreover, once we understand a key regulator’s molecular function and c ...Developmental Metabolism and the Origins of Health and Disease - October 2022
24 - 27 October 2022, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
Metabolism is central to the functions of all cells and its importance in the field of cancer has been clear for many years. Much more recently, developmental biologists have begun to appreciate how metabolism intersects with the processes of growth, patterning and differentiation. The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) is one clinically relevant field of developmental biology where many of the mechanistic links between early-life environmental factors, suc ...From Physics to Function - October 2022
9 - 12 October 2022, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
With the increased appreciation that physical forces are key regulators of all biological processes, new emerging scientific communities are forming around topics such as physical forces in cancer and mechanobiology in different biological processes ranging from development to homeostasis. Currently, there exists somewhat of a void between the biologists and the physicists working on these topics. The interests are shared but the commun ...Cell State Transitions: Approaches, Experimental Systems and Models - July 2022
24 - 27 July 2022, Wiston House, West Sussex, UK
Transitions between cellular identities are fundamental to metazoan biology, from development to disease. Yet how cells navigate accurately between distinct identities remains poorly understood. A primary impediment is that transition is intrinsically dynamic, an outcome of time and stimulation. The methodology and the theory necessary to capture and decode these molecular and cellular dynamics are underdeveloped. This Workshop aims to highlight innovative interdisciplinary a ...Fostering Quantitative Modelling and Experimentation in Developmental Biology - July 2022
10 - 13 July 2022, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
Although the past 50 years have seen great advances in our knowledge about the mechanisms of growth and development, reductionist approaches to the problem have become limited by the sheer complexity of development. Development and growth are linked to two fundamental and long-standing concepts in biology: 1) an organism's genotype affects its phenotype; and 2) virtually all organismal processes are adaptive to environment. The linkage is apparent, but how they are linked is still not wel ...Creative Science Writing - June 2022
26 - 29 June 2022, Wiston House, West Sussex, UK
Are you thinking about writing a popular book or essay to share your scientific passions, would you like advice on how to realise your dream, and would you like to meet others on the same journey? If so, this Workshop is for you. This Creative Science Writing Workshop aims to nurture new voices in science writing (popular science, so ...The Biology and Physics of Left-Right Patterning - June 2022
5 - 8 June 2022, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
Left-right asymmetry is a common feature of animal bodies. For instance, the internal organs of vertebrates are highly asymmetric, something which is essential for their functions. Multiple developmental processes - from initial breaking of embryonic symmetry and asymmetric patterning of the embryo, through to asymmetric morphogenesis of the organs - contribute to generating a functional left-right asymmetric animal. This Workshop aims to bring together s ...Cell size and growth, from single cells to the tree of life - April 2022 [Clone]
3 - 6 April 2022, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
Cell size is tightly linked to cellular physiology – it sets the scale of subcellular compartments, cellular biosynthetic capacity, metabolism, mechanical properties, surface-to-volume ratios, and molecular transport. Changes in cell size are also associated with many disease states such as cancer and ageing. How cell size impacts these different cellular processes and how cells control their size are long-standing but unresolved questions in cell biology. Recent developments have brought important insi ...Cell size and growth, from single cells to the tree of life - April 2022
3 - 6 April 2022, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK
Cell size is tightly linked to cellular physiology – it sets the scale of subcellular compartments, cellular biosynthetic capacity, metabolism, mechanical properties, surface-to-volume ratios, and molecular transport. Changes in cell size are also associated with many disease states such as cancer and ageing. How cell size impacts these different cellular processes and how cells control their size are long-standing but unresolved questions in cell biology. Recent de ...Virtual Workshop: Inflammaging and Regeneration: Pain or Partnership? - August 2021
2 - 4 August 2021, Online
The immune system relies on acute inflammation to mitigate infections, clear damaged cells and initiate tissue healing. A transient painful inflammatory response is tightly linked to regeneration, and an appreciation of the significance of this interplay in translational research is rapidly increasing. Moreover, many of the mechanisms that link inflammation to regeneration are rendered dysfunctional by the aging process. The progressive accumulation of senescent cells over time fo ...Virtual Workshop: Cell State Transitions: Approaches, Experimental Systems and Models - December 2020
14 - 17 December 2020, Online
Transitions between cellular identities are fundamental to metazoan biology, from development to disease. Yet how cells navigate accurately between distinct identities remains poorly understood. A primary challenge is that transition is intrinsically dynamic, an outcome of time and stimulation. The methodology and the theory necessary to capture and decode these molecular and cellular dynamics are underdeveloped. This Workshop aims to highlight innovative interdisciplinary approaches to the qu ...Data Science in Cell Imaging - February 2020
2 - 5 February 2020, Wiston House, UK
Cell imaging has entered the “Big Data” era. New technologies in microscopy and molecular biology have led to an explosion in high-content, dynamic and multidimensional imaging data. At the same time, cell biology has been advancing to study more physiologically relevant and complex systems. Similar to omics-fields two decades ago, our current ability to process, visualize, integrate and mine this new generation of cell imaging data has ...Understanding Human Birth Defects in the Genomic Age - November 2019
10 - 13 November 2019, Wiston House, UK
Birth defects are the leading cause of infant death in the developed world and among the leading causes of death and hospitalization for children of all ages. Despite this devastating effect, we still understand little of their etiology, impeding progress towards treatment and prevention. Moreover, while surgical interventions have improved survival for many children to beyond their first year, our inability to accurately predict, diagnose and treat the common l ...New Frontiers in the Brain: Unexpected Roles of the Choroid Plexus-Cerebrospinal Fluid System in Health and Disease - July 2019
14 - 17 July 2019, Wiston House, UK
Recent years have witnessed transformative breakthroughs in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biology in the vertebrate nervous system. CSF fills the brain’s ventricles, providing essential homeostatic support. The choroid plexus, a highly vascularized sheet of epithelial cells located in each ventricle in the brain, is the principal source of CSF, forms the blood-CSF barrier and is a gateway for immune cell entry into the brain. Diverse cell types contact the CSF, both sensing signals transported by the CSF and contributing to its ...Chromatin-Based Regulation of Development - April 2019
14 - 17 April 2019, Wiston House, UK
The field of developmental biology has often intersected with the exploration of gene regulatory mechanisms. Indeed, much of our knowledge of the mechanisms of embryonic development stems from the analysis of the function of transcriptional regulators, including modulators of chromatin. Conversely, classic discoveries in chromatin-level regulation of gene expression have arisen from developmental models. This workshop takes advantage of the pace of inno ...Reconstitution of Cell Cytoskeleton In Vitro - January 2019
27 - 30 January 2019, Wiston House, UK
"What I cannot create I do not understand”. This famous quote from Richard Feynman illustrates the motivation of the scientists who decided to understand cell biology by isolating their elementary components to understand cell processes. Protein after protein, purified compounds are added to the other in the hope of identifying the minimum set it takes to ensure specific cell functions. Moving enzymes on DNA, folding of amino-acid sequences in vesicles, spatial se ...Evo-Chromo: Towards an Integrative Approach of Chromatin Dynamics Across Eukaryotes - November 2018
4 - 7 November 2018, Wiston House, UK
EVO-DEVO has provided deep changes in our understanding of developmental mechanisms and widened the scope of the diversity of solutions found by distinct groups of organisms to control embryogenesis and differentiation. Although the field of epigenetics and chromatin revolutionized our understanding of biology in the past decade, most studies have been confined to a few model organisms, while evolutionary considerations have been largely left aside. Yet, recent forays into the biology of non-mo ...Development and Evolution of the Human Neocortex - June 2018
10 - 13 June 2018, Wiston House, UK
The human brain is one of the pinnacles of natural evolution, which endows us with unmatched cognitive performance and was likely key for our success during natural selection over other species, including other hominids. Evolution relies on the innovation of genetic, molecular, cellular and histogenetic processes that take place during development. In the case of the brain, this innovation ultimately results in changes on the complexity and ...Cellular Gateways: Expanding the Role of Endocytosis in Plant Development - April 2018
22 - 25 April 2018, Wiston House, UK
Since demonstrating that endocytosis occurs in plants, rapid progress has been made in understanding some of the basic mechanisms and their contribution to plant growth and development. Endocytosis impacts on various plant processes including nutrient uptake, signal transduction, development, cytokinesis, polarity and tropic growth, immunity and responses to abiotic stress in plants, but the molecular mechanism of how the endocytic machinery interacts with its cargoes are largely unkn ...Thinking Beyond the Dish: Taking In Vitro Neural Differentiation to the Next Level - February 2018
4 - 7 February 2018, Wiston House, UK
The past few years have seen an explosion in techniques allowing in vitro neuronal differentiation from undifferentiated cells. These include both 2D and 3D approaches such as neural rosettes, cortical spheroids, and cerebral organoids. Although these approaches have been successful in providing the first in vitro models of certain neurological disorders, they are only currently able to recapitulate very early stages of brain development. Thus, their potential to model later events and ...Symbiosis in the Microbial World: From Ecology to Genome Evolution - November 2017
5 - 9 November 2017, Wiston House, UK
Symbiosis - intimate and persistent interaction between two or more distinct biological entities - has historically received less attention than other interactions such as predation or competition, but is increasingly recognized as one of the key selective forces in evolution. Most species from across the tree of life have been shaped by a long history of interdependent co-evolution, from the bacterial endosymbionts that provide insects with vital nutrients t ...Current Status and Future Directions of Lévy Walk Research - September 2017
10 - 13 September 2017, Wiston House, UK
A wide variety of organisms, from cells to humans, have movement patterns resembling Lévy walks. As a result, there is intense interest in Lévy walks as a potentially fundamental, ubiquitous form of movement but difficult open questions remain that would benefit from uniting research spanning a variety of disciplines. The Workshop will bring together leading experts to tackle these questions at the frontiers of Lévy walk research. Topics to be discussed include the st ...Intercellular Interactions in Context: Towards a Mechanistic Understanding of Cells in Organs - February 2017
5th - 8th February 2017, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
Mammalian cell biology at present is split between two camps: one of which values precision in molecular perturbation and analysis with focus on experimental well-defined 2D settings and the other which values 3D tissue context most and accepts a diminished molecular tool kit in exchange for increased physiologic relevance. A third strategy has been to exploit the power of genetically tractable and optically transparent model systems to elucidate fundamental molecular pathways and cell ...Rethinking Cancer - November 2016
20th - 23rd November 2016, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
Cancer therapeutics currently have the lowest clinical trial success rate of all major diseases. Partly as a result, cancer will soon be the leading cause of mortality in developed countries. As a disease embedded in the fundamentals of our biology, it presents difficult challenges that would benefit from uniting a variety of related and unrelated fields. Combining extant cancer approaches with input from exper ...Metabolism in Development and Disease - May 2016
15th - 18th May 2016, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
In 1925, Otto Warburg noted that many types of cancer cells derive energy from glycolysis rather than oxidative phosphorylation even in the presence of oxygen. This observation has received renewed attention from cancer biologists, and it has emerged that specialized metabolic wiring (including “Warbug” metabolism) is key to supporting the production of biomass necessary for growth. How metabolic adaptations might regulate gro ...Transdifferentiation and Tissue Plasticity in Cardiovascular Rejuvenation - February 2016
7th – 10th February 2016, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
The mammalian heart has historically been considered to be a static, non-regenerative organ. New research has led to exciting insights into the capacity of the mammalian heart to regenerate in the face of injury. The current evidence in 2016 suggested that the reparative process may involve cellular transdifferentiation and dedifferentiation, suggesting unexpected cellular plasticity. Re-activation of developmental programs also holds promise for regeneration and reprogramming as po ...Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance - October 2015
4th – 7th October 2015, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
The transmission of epigenetic states across cell divisions in somatic tissues is now well accepted and the mechanisms are starting to be unveiled. The extent to which epigenetic inheritance can occur across generations is less clear, but represents a very exciting area with major implications for human health, plant and animal breeding and evolution. Given the press coverage and public interest at the time, as well as the intensive research and certai ...Getting Into and Out of Mitosis - May 2015
10th - 13th May 2015, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
Mitosis has retained its fascination ever since the first beautiful pictures drawn by Walther Flemming in the late 19th Century. Now, with modern molecular and cell biological tools, equally beautiful pictures are being created as the molecular mechanisms underlying mitosis are elucidated. As our understanding of the molecular machinery of the division apparatus expands, there has been a dramatic resurgence of interest in understanding how cells take the initial decision to com ...Eukaryo-/Archaeogenesis: Where Do We Stand? - March 2015
8th – 11th March 2015, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
Elucidating the nature of the relationship linking Archaea and Eucarya is at the crossroads of many research fields, including molecular phylogenetics, genomics, paleogeology, biochemistry and cell biology, amongst others. Recent advances in these fields include: the discovery of typical eukaryotic features in Archaea and bacteria; the inference that the last common ancestor of Eucarya was very similar to present day eukaryotes; the discovery of 2.1 Gyr large colonial fo ...Coordinating Cell Polarity - May 2014
18th – 21st May 2014, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
In recent years, great progress has been made by experimental biologists towards understanding how during plant and animal morphogenesis cells become polarised in a manner that is coordinated between each other and the axes of the tissue. Significant efforts have also been made by theoreticians to model such processes. Nevertheless, we believe that there are a number of barriers to progress: First, although the evidence suggests that similar mechanisms a ...Navigating the Cell: How Motors Function In Vivo - March 2014
23rd – 26th March 2014, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
Motor proteins and the cytoskeletal tracks that they use are the key components that define the organization of every eukaryotic cell. A great deal is now known about how motors utilize the energy of ATP to move along cytoskeletal tracks. The major challenge in the field is to now understand how motors function in a complex and crowded intracellular environment. The goal of this Workshop was to bring together a group of investigators working across multiple fields of science to con ...Evolution of the Human Neocortex: How Unique Are We? - September 2013
22nd – 25th September 2013, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
There has been an explosion of new information that bears on the issue of human brain evolution. These breakthroughs are multidisciplinary and come from the fields of developmental biology, genetics, molecular biology, and ethology. With this burst of new information comes an opportunity to take stock of the landscape and integrate the findings into an updated, modern view of human cortical evolution. The outcome will provide a better understanding of the unique features of the h ...Mitosis and Nuclear Structure - June 2013
23rd – 26th June 2013, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
Mitosis and genome segregation in eukaryotes are surprisingly dependent on nuclear pore complex proteins (‘Nups’) plus actin and other components of the nucleoskeleton. This suggests nuclear structure and mitosis might have co-evolved in early eukaryotes. Fundamentally new insight about mitosis is also coming from bacteria, in which DNA segregation is mediated by proteins related to actin or other conserved nucleo-cyto ...Building a Centrosome - March 2013
10th - 13th March 2013, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
The centrosome, a small organelle, is a key microtubule organising centre in cells. It is composed of a pair of cylindrical centrioles that are embedded in a protein-rich matrix. In each cell cycle the centrosome duplicates once and only once in a semi-conservative fashion much like the DNA in the nucleus. Centrosomes play important roles both in cycling and non-cycling cells: in the former they participate in building the bipolar mitotic spindle, w ...Imaging in Cell Biology: Where Next? - October 2012
14th – 17th October 2012, Cumberland Lodge, The Great Park, Windsor, Berkshire, UK
This meeting was set up to provide an ideal forum for leaders in different areas of single molecule analysis, high- and super-resolution imaging and data processing both at cellular level and within intact tissues. The interaction between scientists developing and applying different forms of imaging will help to integrate the unique features of these approaches and highlight areas which need to be further developed. The emphasis will be on cross-fertilisation betw ...Epigenetic Memory - June 2012
24th - 27th June 2012, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
The aim of this Workshop was to discuss the phenomenon of epigenetic memory. By this, we mean to include those cases where daughter cells remember the gene expression or differentiation pattern of their parental cell, even though this cannot be readily explained by the inheritance of factors that re-instruct the daughter cells like the parental cell. For example, when a somatic nucleus is transplanted to an amphibian egg the resulting blastul ...New Technologies and Applications for Genome Engineering - March 2012
25th - 28th March 2012, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
Technologies for manipulating the genomes of many cell types are being developed at an increasingly rapid rate using a variety of DNA engineering tools. Current capabilities range from making predesigned nucleotide changes in a gene (single nucleotide changes, insertions, deletions), to generating large scale chromosomal rearrangements including syntenic replacements with foreign chromosomal DNA, and recently to creating an entirely artificial functioning genome. The potential for ge ...Growth, Division and Differentiation: Understanding Developmental Control - September 2011
18th – 21st September 2011, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
To generate tissue mass and to adopt diverse functions, cells of the early embryo must grow, divide and ultimately differentiate. While pathways controlling these individual events have been well-characterised, we have much less understanding of the mechanisms co-ordinating these processes during embryogenesis. The aim of this workshop was to bring together researchers studying cell growth, cell cycle and differentiation in diverse developmental models, to explore common control me ...Fish Muscle Growth and Repair: Models Linking Biomedicine and Aquaculture - June 2011
26th - 29th June 2011, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
This meeting was designed to bring together the disparate communities of researchers working on fish myogenesis, from basic developmental mechanisms, through disease models to muscle growth in aquaculture species. Aquaculture has the possibility to replace wild fisheries and limit the damage of global over-fishing that is catastrophically depleting wild fish stocks. Research on growth, in particular muscle formation, in commercial fish species is therefore urgently needed to enhance the efficiency ...Cancer as a Microevolutionary Process - March 2011
6th - 9th March 2011, Wilton Park, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
It is not so much the inherent mechanistic diversity of cancers that makes them difficult to treat so much as the fact that they are evolving targets. Although they may be initially derived from a clonal progenitor, by the time they are macroscopic tumors comprise heterogeneous cell populations that are divergent both genetically and in acquired status (e.g. signaling, location, history). Unfortunately, most approaches to understanding cancers effectively treat a t ...Stochasticity in Cell and Developmental Processes - Oct 2010
17th - 20th October 2010, Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, Berkshire, UK
The process of transcription is, from the biochemical point of view, very dependent on the concentration and molecular interactions of transcription factors and components of the basal transcriptional machinery. Recent studies in unicellular organisms have shown that, as a consequence, there is a significant stochastic element to gene expression. This can give rise to non-genetic heterogeneity in a population of cells. In some cases stochasti ...Obesity: The Gene – Environment Interaction and its Implications - May 2010
9th - 12th May 2010, Melville Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Obesity is widely regarded as being the most serious health threat facing the western world. In the last decade this problem has spread into developing countries and become a true pandemic. Fundamental biological studies have clearly established that there is a strong genetic basis to obesity susceptibility. Yet, it is also clear that there are large environmental effects at play. Obesity is consequently the result of a complex gene by environment interaction ...Neural Stem Cells in Development and Disease - Feb 2010
7th - 10th February 2010, Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
This inter-disciplinary meeting brought together clinicians investigating cancers and developmental defects of the CNS and researchers working on the regulation of neural progenitor cells in invertebrate and vertebrate contexts. The Workshop aimed to define similarities/differences between cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating neural progenitor cells in developing, adult and cancerous tissue and to increase understanding of how cancer stem cells and neural devel ...
