Muscle Cell Development Meeting Report
Report by Barbara Villarejo Balcells (The Institute of Cancer Research, London)
The beginning of July 2008 saw the very first British Muscle Cell Development meeting dedicated to provide PhD students and Post-doctoral researchers with a national forum to present their work and promote collaboration between researchers.
This one day meeting, held in one of London’s oldest universities, King’s College, was attended by more than 60 scientists. The programme comprised:
- two keynote lectures
- 17 short talks
- three poster sessions
The atmosphere of this meeting was friendly and relaxed with plenty of opportunities for stimulating discussions throughout the day and with a terrific setting – the Gordon Museum within King’s College which houses an extraordinary and diverse collection of historic specimens and medical artefacts.
The first session of the day was on the theme of muscle cytoskeleton. Talks included those by PhD student Zacharias Orfanos, Dr. Manuela Lahne and Dr. Tim Geach. They reported on their work utilising various animal models, such as the fruit fly, zebrafish and frogs to study muscle and the structure that maintains cell shape called the cytoskeleton.
Lunch followed with plenty of time to socialise and look at the posters. The meeting resumed with a keynote lecture by Prof. Margaret Buckingham who spoke on two proteins called PAX3 and PAX7 that control the survival and development of muscle stem cells.
Two sessions followed with the themes ‘Transcriptional Regulation of Muscle’ and ‘Muscle Tissue Assembly’. Some of the highlights of these sessions included PhD student Daniel Osborn’s talk about muscle cell development in zebrafish. Dr. Lisha Ma convincingly showed how the fruit fly can prove a useful model for studying human dilated cardiomyopathy. Dr. Peleg Hasson also described his work on the assembly of muscle in mice and Dr. Cedric Soler his work with fruit fly.
The final lecture of the day was given by Prof. Phil Ingham on the complex regulation of the development of muscle fibres into either slow or fast twitch muscle. The day finished with a casual drinks reception and the announcement of the prizes for poster and talk presentations. The poster prize went to PhD student Binyam Mogessie who is investigating the molecular mechanisms behind the increased microtubule stability seen during muscle differentiation. I was ecstatic to receive the talk prize for my presentation on how a gene called FoxO1 is involved in rhabdomyosarcoma (a type of cancer of muscle).
This was a very enjoyable meeting, a great opportunity to present scientific achievements and an overall great success. This could not have been possible without the efforts of the organisers from King’s College London and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and the invaluable contributions of the sponsors Peqlab, Zeiss, MYORES, ASGBI, ICR, the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign and The Company of Biologists.
This article was adapted from a report written by PhD student Barbara Villarejo Balcells for The Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland (ASGBI).
