26th CECE successfully held in Zurich
The 26th conference of the ESCE was held in Zurich 21-25 August (www.cece2012.org) with approximately 200 registered participants. The conference opened in grand style with a superb plenary lecture given by Nobel laureate Jules Hoffman (University of Strasbourg) on innate immunity that emphasized the importance of comparative studies. There were also five additional outstanding plenary lectures and a large number of high-quality presentations in parallel symposia. The conference was highlighted on the news web page of the University of Zürich (text in German): link.It is a great pleasure for me to thank Elisabeth Eppler, president of the local organizing committee, and her colleagues for organizing such an excellent conference and composing such an attractive program. So attractive that many conference attendants moaned about having "problems" choosing which one to attend. The venue at the Irchel Campus of the University of Zurich was ideally suited for the CECE, with lecture halls surrounding a central square with posters and exhibits and where lunches and coffee were served. Conference photos will soon be posted; check the present page shortly for the link.
A workshop on bioinformatics and functional genomics preceded the conference and offered the participants a thorough introduction to these fields including hands-on work with databases and phylogenetic analyses and a visit to the impressive set-up of the Functional Genomics Center Zurich headed by Prof. Ralph Schlapbach.
Poster prizes were awarded to:
1. Monicá Lopes-Marques, CIIMAR, LECEMA, Porto, Portugal: The PPAR nuclear receptors in bilaterians: An evolutionary and functional approach.
2. Liliana Anjos, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal: A new action for teleost parathyroid hormone family members in epidermal outgrowth.
3. Isabel Cabas, University of Murcia, Cell Biology and Histology, Murcia, Spain: G1, a selective GPR30 agonist, alters in vivo the immune response of gilthead seabream.
Awards for the best oral presentations were given to:
1. Julie Tobback, KU Leuven, Belgium: A role for circadian clock genes in the desert locust reproduction and development.
2. Olivier Mirabeau, INAF-CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France: Evolution of bilaterian peptidergic systems: a phylogenomics perspective.
3. Jerome Hui, University of Oxford, United Kingdom: MicroRNAs and comparative genomics in arthropod endocrinology, evolution, and environment.
It is a pleasure for me to congratulate the recipients of these awards. Additionally, no less than 35 travel grants were given to young conference participants to attend the conference.
After such a stimulating conference, one begins immediately to look forward to the next CECE in Rennes in 2014!
Dan Larhammar
President of the ESCE