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Get an inside look into a successful, sustainable conference

11 July 2024

It can be problematic to perfectly blend social, environmental and financial goals when organising an academic event, but we think that Chrissy Hammond (University of Bristol) and her co-organisers Lizzie Lawrence, Joanna Moss, Nikki Stevenson and Rabia Sevil rose to the challenge at The Dynamic matrix: mechanics, ageing and repair Conference, a British Society for Matrix Biology (BSMB) meeting. We were delighted to support this event from our Fund for Innovations in Sustainable Conferencing and Scientific Meeting Grants, and we are keen to continue supporting events like this in the future.

We are very grateful to Chrissy for welcoming us at this event. We had the opportunity to talk with the main stakeholders involved in the planning process and we would like to share with you some of the good practices they implemented whilst organising a green meeting.

Microtubule cryo-EM at Technische Universität Dresden

24 October 2023

Dr Thomas Mueller-Reichert’s lab at the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) in Germany

The mitotic spindle is crucial for proper chromosome segregation during cell division. Chromosome segregation takes place in anaphase and previous work has shown that the speed of this process depends on the structure of the spindle. Yitong Xu is a graduate student in Stefano Di Talia’s lab at Duke University, where she studies mitosis and microtubule dynamics in Drosophila melanogaster embryos. Yitong recently used a Travelling Fellowship from Journal of Cell Science to visit Dr Thomas Mueller-Reichert’s lab at the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) in Germany, to conduct cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) observations of the Drosophila spindle.

Exploring regeneration in Woods Hole, Massachusetts

21 September 2023

Grace Holmes enjoying a boat ride to collect sea animals used for research purposes.

To develop her own understanding of tissue regeneration, Grace Holmes, a master’s student from the Royal Veterinary College, used a Travelling Fellowship from Development to visit the Echeverri lab at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. There, she explored the role of Leucine Rich Repeat Kinase 2 (LRRK2), a protein associated with Parkinson’s disease in humans, in regeneration.

Exploring Skin Cancer Molecular Mechanisms: a Travel Grant experience at the Gordon Research Conference

10 August 2023

Darshan Mehta attending the Gordon Research Conference, posing for a photograph next to his research poster

Darshan Mehta is a PhD student studying the mechanisms behind skin cancer at the Tata Memorial Centre Kharghar, Navi Mumbai, India. He took the opportunity to use a Conference Travel Grant from Disease Models & Mechanisms to travel to the 2023 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Stem Cells and Cancer – a meeting intended to explore cutting-edge research in the field of cell biology and cancer.

Linking diverged gene expression inside complex neuronal circuits with behavioural traits of Medaka

12 June 2023

Loosli lab group having lunchAsymmetries in size between the left and right sides of the central nervous system are often associated with asymmetries in neuronal organisation. Current literature suggests that variations in the activities of genetic pathways underlie these asymmetries, which in turn may cause variation of behavioural traits.

Going belowground: exploring the protective role of isoprene in plant roots at the Sharkey lab

26 March 2024

Manuel Bellucci in the lab

Isoprene is a biogenic volatile compound emitted by many different plants. Above ground, this compound protects plants from a range of abiotic and biotic stresses. But what happens belowground is less clear and it is this question that fascinated Manuel Bellucci, a PhD student in the Department of Science and Technology for Sustainable Development and the Campus Bio-Medico of the University of Rome (Italy).

Sustainable transport: one goal, more solutions working together

24 October 2023

Travelling represents the largest carbon impact of an event. It can count for up to 56% of the whole event’s carbon footprint 1, and the impact is significantly higher when international participants use flights to reach the event.

With this in mind, we were delighted to award a Sustainable Conferencing Grant to Dr Serena Stanga who came with a solution that combined technology with alternative travelling, leading to a reduction in travel carbon footprint for her symposium “In pursuit of healthy brain aging: unveiling the biology of novel age-related mechanisms leading to dementia”, which was part of the 20th National Congress of the Italian Society for Neuroscience (SINS) 2.

Mapping Neuromodulator expression in Octopus vulgaris: Travelling Fellowship from Journal of Experimental Biology

30 August 2023

Federica the Travelling Fellowship recipient working at the host lab.

To develop her own understanding of neural mapping, Federica Pizzulli, a PhD student from the Biology and Evolution of Marine Organisms Department of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples, used a Travelling Fellowship from Journal of Experimental Biology to visit the Seuntjens lab at KU Leuven, Belgium. The lab was the first to adapt in-situ Hybridization Chain Reaction (HCR) to Octopus vulgaris.

A Travelling Fellowship to explore ecotoxicology, PVC and the sea

24 July 2023

Rocío’s Travelling Fellowship have shown that there were no effects of pristine PVC leachates on the organisms tested. In the case of environmental PVC, PE and PP leachates, no effects were observed on P. tricornutum. However, there were effects on N. spinipes, including a 32% rate of mortality after 24 hours caused by leachates from PVC.

Plastic leachates are chemicals that migrate from plastics to the surrounding aquatic environment composed by mixtures of additives. These chemicals form a solution of organic and inorganic pollutants which represent a serious problem to the environment, as they can induce toxicity in both diatom and copepod populations at the base of the food chain. Rocío Soledad Pazos, a postdoc from National University of La Plata, used a Travelling Fellowship from Journal of Experimental Biology to visit the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) in Ostend, Belgium – here she was able to investigate the impact of leachates on the environment.

A trip to Ireland for human organoid engineering – a Travelling Fellowship story from Disease Models & Mechanisms

16 May 2023

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) represent a growing challenge in modern medicine and may give rise to impaired cognition, communication, and psychomotor skills. It is therefore very important that more sophisticated in vitro models are created to reveal the complexities of these disorders.

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