REPORT ON EMBO LECTURE COURSE ON NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN GENOMICS FOR BIOMEDICINE, CO-SPONSORED BY ESF,
8 - 13 APRIL, BRDO ESTATE, SLOVENIA

Reports

Organised by Franc Gubensek¹
Co-organisers: Peter Dovc², Radovan Komel^3*, Maja Ravnikar⁴, Damjana Rozman³, Borut Štrukelj⁵ and Boris Turk¹

¹Institute Jozef Stefan, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
²Zootechnical Department, Biotechnical Faculty, Groblje 3, Domzale, Slovenia
³Medical Centre for Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine, Vrazov trg 2, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
⁴Centre 'Planta', National Institute of Biology, Vecna pot 111, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
⁵Faculty of Pharmacy, Askerceva 7, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

*Correspondence to Medical Centre for Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine, Vrazov trg 2, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

Electronic address:
radovan.komel@mf.uni-lj.si

Funded by EMBO: European Molecular Biology Organisation

Funded by ESF: European Science Fundation, ESF Programme on Integrated Approaches for Functional Genomics

Funded by Ministry of Education, Sience and Sports, Republic of Slovenia

Supported by the pharmaceutical companies LEK d.d., Ljubljana and KRKA d.d., Novo mesto

* denotes memebers of EMBO

1. Introduction

The first EMBO Lecture Course ever held in Slovenia was devoted to the broad area of genomic research and covered studies of human, animal and plant genomes, so that most activities in the area of molecular biology in this country and very likely in other Central and Eastern European countries were considered.

In highly developed European countries scientific research in the field of genomics is rapidly increasing. We organised this course to present current progress and to offer an opportunity to young scientists and other participants to discuss their ideas and their problems with leading European scientists and to be acquainted by them with new developments in the different fields of genomics. The structure of the course was designed to foster discussion and collaboration where appropriate with colleagues working in related research fields and using similar approaches. The course was limited to 80 participants. Priority was given to applications from graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, but other participants were welcome as well. All were encouraged to present a poster on their research work.
About 80% of the time was planned for lectures and discussion. There were also poster sessions and the most interesting posters were selected for short oral presentations. Adequate time for contact with lecturers was available during the poster sessions, breaks, lunch and dinner. All the participants were located in the same hotel.

2. Programme of the course

Invited lectures were planed to 40 min followed by 5 min discussion. Posters were displayed in two sections each for two days. Posters selected for oral presentations were planed to 10 min followed by 5 min discussion.

The programme was divided into 3 sections:

1. Structure, regulation and evolution of genomes
2. Genes and diseases / gene therapy
3. New techniques and tools in genomics

Registration of the participants and Get Together took place on Tuesday, April 8.

Section I (first part) took place on Wednesday, April 9, after opening of the course, from 8.40 - 16.30, with a lunch break at noon.
The first poster session (for Section I) took place on Wednesday, April 9, from 16.30 - 18.00, and was followed, from 18.00 - 20.00 by 10 min presentations of selected posters + 5 min discussion at each.

On Thursday, April 10, after the morning Section I (second part) and the afternoon Section II (first part), there was a general discussion in which lecturers and participants (graduate students and post-doctoral fellows) were involved.

Second part of the Section II took place on Friday, April 11, from 8.30 - 12.45, and was followed after lunch break by Section II poster session (from 14.30 - 16.30), then 10-min presentations of selected posters + 5 min discussion at each (from 16.30 - 19.00), and finally by general discussion (from 19.00 - 19.30).

Section III (first part) took place on Saturday, April 12, from 8.30 - 12.00, and was followed after lunch break by excursion into Alpine region.

Next day, on Sunday, April 13, the second part of the Section III was concluded by concluding remarks and closing of the meeting at 11.00.

3. Scientific content of the event

The final list of lectures (in order of presentations) by sections was as follows:

Section I: Structure, regulation and evolution of genomes

Urs A. Meyer: Individuality of genomes, transcriptomes and proteomes
Jože Trontelj: Gene technology applied to human beings: fears and concerns
Giorgio Bernardi: Evolutionary genomics of vertebrates
Frank Gannon: The estrogen receptor in various disease contexts
Paolo Sassone-Corsi: Unique transcriptional rules in spermatogenesis
Jean Weissenbach: Whole genome analyses based on comparative genomics
Giorgio Bernardi: Evolutionary genomics of vertebrates
Francisco E. Baralle: Molecular pathology of pre-mRNA splicing
Gerry Melino: Evolution of function of the p53 family
Ronald Plasterk: RNAi and transposon silencing in C. elegans
Marjori Matzke: Epigenetic regulation of the genome by double stranded RNA
Nancy Terryn: Transgenic plants: the key to a sustainable agriculture

Section II: Genes and diseases/gene therapy

Frank Grosveld: Transcription of the beta-globin locus
Frank Gannon: The estrogen receptor in a various disease context
Maria Carmo-Fonseca: Trinucleotide expansion diseases - an overview
Flavia Bazzoni: A new strategy for safe and efficient use of TNF-a in cancer therapy
Gennaro Ciliberto: Evolution of adenoviral vectors for somatic gene therapy: from first
generation to fully deleted
Erwin Wagner: Functions of AP-1 in development and disease
Eckhard Wolf: Growth regulation by the insulin-like growth factor (IGF) system - functional
dissection of hypertrophic and hyperplastic effects
Maria Carmo-Fonseca: Making a cellular model of a trinucleotide expansion disease
Gennaro Ciliberto: In vivo gene transfer to muscle for somatic gene therapy and vaccine
development
Miroslav Radman: How good is our genome?

Section III: New techniques and tools in genomics

John Clark: Gene targeting in livestock
François Cuzin: Differentiation of germ cells: from fundamental aspects to the development
of new genetic engineering technologies
Denis Pompon: New concepts for DNA chip design: from self-probing devices to detection of
single molecule
Wilhelm Ansorge: The human genome on a chip
Eckhard Wolf: Nuclear transfer in mammals - maternal cytoplasmic effects and epigenetic
reprogramming
Mark Hink: Imaging protein-protein interactions in living cells
Konstantinos Anastassiadis: Inducible transgene expression

4. Assesment of the results and future directions

The course was considered very interesting and successful by a vast majority of the participants. We are thankful to invited speakers for their presentations that made this meeting very instructive particularly to younger scientists that were motivated to increase the level of the investigation in their countries and to establish collaborations with the scientists in the countries where molecular biology is on cutting edge. The oportunity given to young scientists to present oraly their contributions to the auditorium of scientific excellence represented great challenge, and was for many of them the first international experience of that kind. To our great satisfaction a great number of them took this oportunity as they entered freely into discussions on their work that could give them new views and ideas how to proceed. We found general discussions that were held at the end of each day very important, because speakers were addressed by young scientists with many challenging and sometimes provokative questions about the future of functional genomics and biomedical science and their impact on the society of the future. There is no doubt that the course encouraged better communication not only between the groups from which the participants and the authors of posters were coming but also triggered links and hopefully some future collaborations between these groups and scientists from the prominent European laboratories.

Acknowledgements

The organisers would like to thank EMBO for financially supporting this meeting and for stimulating its organisation. ESF considerably contributed to cover in part the travel costs of attendants. The pharmaceutical companies LEK and KRKA as well as Slovenian Ministry for Education, Science and Sports also sponsored the meeting. Jozef Stefan Institute, National Institute of Biology and Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana kindly supplied some equipment for the presentations.