Mélanie Roussat, Alicante, 23-26 October 2019

European Developmental Biology Congress

→ 400 € Prize

3rd year PhD student with Sophie Bel-Vialar, CBI, Toulouse

Thanks to the travel grant from the SFBD, I had the opportunity to participate to the European Developmental Biology Congress, that took place in Alicante from 28 to 26 October 2019.

This international congress gathered outstanding developmental biologists and was the chance to gain insight into the range of emerging research in this area. I really enjoyed the opening session presented Nipam Patel, which talked about how butterfly wings gets colored. I was very interested by the symposium “Cell Biology of Development” and I had the chance to listen James Briscoe present their work on spatial and temporal dynamics of gene expression in the developing mouse spinal cord. The talk of Didier Stainier, which explained that transcriptional adaptation can compensate genetic loss of function in the case of a mutation that induce mRNA degradation, was also very insightful. During the meeting, I presented a poster which allowed me to exchange about my work. I had interesting feedback that will help me to conclude my project. Moreover, this interdisciplinary congress was the occasion to have prospects for postdocs, and I was particularly interested in the Evo-Devo symposium. I would like to mention the talk de Eve Seuntjens on the development of the peculiar central nervous system of cephalopods, and Nicolas Rohner, on cavefish metabolism adaptation in extreme environments.

This congress was the opportunity for me to discover labs that I would contact to pursue my scientist career.