Alexandre Chuyen, Porto, 7-10 November 2018

Joint Meeting of the Portuguese, Spanish and French Societies for Developmental Biology

2rd year PhD. student with Andrea Pasini, team Biology of ciliated epithelia, IBDM, Marseille.

– article in English –

Thanks to an SFBD travel fellowship I attended the joint Meeting of SPBD, SEBD and SFBD in Porto. Besides being my first travel to Portugal, it was really nice to witness this very well organized meeting which reviewed most of the leading-edge research in developmental biology. This congress has shown the broad multi-scale spectrum of developmental biology research from epigenetics involved in X-chromosome reactivation during the migratory phase of primordial germ cells (Bernhard Payer), to in-silico modelization of diverse processes to predict their dynamics and range of interaction.

Jean-François Brunet opening keynote lecture showed how much developmental biology is changing our view of biology by questioning century-old dogma legacy of physiological research. I was intrigued by how morphogenesis can explain both eye degeneration in the blind Mexican cavefish (Sylvie Rétaux) and asymmetric eye migration of the flatfish eye (Marco António Campinho). In both model eyes first developed symmetrically with conserved developmental process then in one case the eyes regress while it moves in the second case. Both speakers through they research nicely explain how and why those models have conserved the first step of symmetrical eye development followed by regeneration or asymmetric migration of one eye.

On top of that it was pleasant to build a rich scientific network. I remember how much poster session was intense and allow me to meet potential collaborators for further research. Nevertheless, social events are also important and gave me the opportunity to discuss with other PhD students that experienced the same technical issues with their own model and upon discussion we exchanged information to improve our own settings for further experiments.

I want to thank all SFBD members to give me this opportunity to be there