Edinburgh Research Explorer Fish from Head to Tail Citation for published version: Griffiths, GW, Müller, F, Ledin, J, Patton, EE, Gjøen, T, Lobert, VH, Winther-Larsen, HC, Mullins, M, Joly, J- S, Weltzien, F-A, Press, CM & Aleström, P 2016, 'Fish from Head to Tail: The 9th European Zebrafish Meeting in Oslo', Zebrafish. https://doi.org/10.1089/zeb.2015.1212 Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1089/zeb.2015.1212 Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Peer reviewed version Published In: Zebrafish General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 ZEBRAFISH Volume 00, Number 00, 2015 Interviews ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089/zeb.2015.1212 Fish from Head to Tail: The 9th European Zebrafish Meeting in Oslo Gareth Wyn Griffiths,1 Ferenc Mu¨ller,2 Johan Ledin,3 E. Elizabeth Patton,4 Tor Gjøen,5 Viola He´le`ne Lobert,6 Hanne Cecilie Winther-Larsen,5 Mary Mullins,7 Jean-Stephane Joly,8 Finn-Arne Weltzien,9 Charles McLean Press,9 and Peter Alestro¨m9 Abstract The 9th European Zebrafish Meeting took place recently in Oslo (June 28–July 2, 2015). A total of 650 participants came to hear the latest research news focused on the zebrafish, Danio rerio, and to its distant evolutionary relative medaka, Oryzias latipes. The packed program included keynote and plenary talks, short oral presentations and poster sessions, workshops, and strategic discussions. The meeting was a great success and revealed dramatically how important the zebrafish in particular has become as a model system for topics, such as developmental biology, functional genomics, biomedicine, toxicology, and drug development. A new emphasis was given to its potential as a model for aquaculture, a topic of great economic interest to the host country Norway and for the future global food supply in general. Zebrafish husbandry as well as its use in teaching were also covered in separate workshops. As has become a tradition in these meetings, there was a well-attended Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and ZFIN workshop focused on Zebrafish Genome Resources on the first day. The full EZM 2015 program with abstracts can be read and downloaded from the EZM 2015 Web site zebrafish2015.org. Introduction 2-h poster session, followed by three parallel sessions with eight selected short presentations. These were followed by a get-together on the first Sunday evening set the poster session follow-up, with drinks. In the late afternoon on Astage for many old friends and colleagues to greet each Tuesday, there was a Community Session and on Wednesday other and to get ready for an early Monday morning start at 8 the workshop DANIO-CODE. AM. The organizing committee was subdivided into a local At the closing remarks by Peter Alestro¨matnoonon committee responsible for the EZM setup and four scientific Thursday, the EZM 2017 venue announcement revealed that subcommittees in charge of each day each of the scientific Hungary will be the next host country. Ma´te´ Varga (Eo¨tvo¨s program. Each day was dedicated to a main subject area, Lora´nd University, Budapest) invited the EZM 2015 partici- namely: (1) Omics and new technologies; (2) biomedicine pants to Budapest in the summer 2017. After the formal con- models; (3) aquaculture models, reproduction, and toxicology; ference closure, an EUFishBioMed Society Assembly was and (4) development and neurobiology. Each morning was held. The Oslo Congress Center turned out to be an ideal venue organized into one keynote and five shorter invited plenary for the event, right in the center of the city and close walking lectures. During the lunch breaks, there was one symposium distance to all the hotels. The organizing company Congress- (sponsored by Tecniplast) and one workshop on Zebrafish in Conference AS was excellent in all respects. We were also Teaching. Each afternoon during days 1–3, there was an initial fortunate that the weather was nice throughout the event. 1Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. 2Institute of Genomics Sciences, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 3Department of Organismal Biology, Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. 4MRC Human Genetics Unit, Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 5School of Pharmacy, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. 6Institute for Cancer Research, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway. 7School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 8CNRS/INRA, NEURO-Paris Saclay Institute, Paris, France. 9Department of Basic Sciences and Aquatic Medicine, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Oslo, Norway. 1 2 GRIFFITHS ET AL. The 9th European Zebrafish Meeting tween the observed phenotypes caused by gene knockdowns (e.g., morphants) versus genetic mutations (e.g., CRISPR gene The 9th EZM program started with two short but insightful knockout). To identify the reasons underlying the phenotypic opening addresses by the conference hosts and rectors of the differences between mutants and knockdowns, they made mu- University of Oslo, Ole Petter Ottersen, a neurobiologist, and of tations in zebrafish egfl7, an endothelial extracellular matrix the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Mari Sundli Tveit gene of therapeutic interest. The egfl7 morpholino-injected an- (Fig. 1). The first morning’s session on zebrafish genome and imals (morphants) exhibit severe vascular defects, but egfl7 phenome was chaired by Andrea Pauli and Christian Mosimann. mutants do not show any obvious phenotypes. They identified a The first keynote lecture entitled ‘‘Big Data in Biology’’ given set of proteins and genes that were upregulated in mutants but by Ewan Birney from the EMBL-associated European Bioin- not in morphants. Overall, their data argued for the activation of formatics Institute (Hinxton, UK), the main European hub for a compensatory network to buffer against deleterious muta- biomolecular data, discussed the growing problem of how to tions, which was not observed after translational or tran- deal with ever-increasing data sets in zebrafish and medaka scriptional knockdown. Jeroen Bakkers (Hubrecht Institute, research. He pointed out that the two main technology drivers Utrecht, The Netherlands) described an exciting method they for this glut of data come from DNA sequencing and imaging, have developed, RNA tomography, which is ideal to obtain one of the main reasons that keep attracting more and more whole-genome transcriptome information in a spatially re- researchers to these transparent fish systems. Birney pointed out solved manner in embryos or tissues. This new approach that a key focus of current genomics is the elucidation of the combines traditional histological techniques with low-input functional consequences of sequence variation among individ- RNA sequencing and mathematical image reconstruction to uals and populations. In this regard, medaka scientists have generate a high-resolution, genome-wide atlas of gene ex- made headway by producing numerous inbred lines. A major pression in the embryo or tissue of interest. So far, they have task for the zebrafish community will be to concentrate its ef- applied this approach to three early stages of zebrafish de- forts to generate similar resources for zebrafish genetics. In the velopment, but they have also recently extended the method first plenary lecture, Jose´ Luis Go´mez-Skarmeta (Universidad to identify genes expressed in isolated tissues, such as the Auto´noma de Madrid, Spain) discussed details of how the regenerating zebrafish heart. generation of distinctive cell types that form different tissues Day 1 afternoon sessions encountered 101 posters and and organs requires precise temporal and spatial control of gene selected short talks in three parallel sessions on Omics (O-I), expression. One mechanism that his research has revealed to be New Technologies and Imaging (O-II), and Husbandry (O- important is the epigenetic landscape of regulatory elements III). In ORAL I—Omics (moderators Shawn Burgess and upstream of the key master genes, with a striking conservation Ferenc Mu¨ller), Elisabeth Busch-Nentwich presented a novel of their 3D architecture in the chromosomes of both zebrafish approach for mutant characterization by multiplexed mRNA and mice. In the second plenary lecture, Steve Harvey (Well- sequencing and identification of differential transcript come Trust Sanger Institute, UK) reported promising prelimi- abundance. Cecilia Winata discussed translational regulation nary results with single-cell transcriptomics to characterize the of maternal transcripts before and after the midblastula responses of cells to spatial signal during early embryo pat- transition and presented evidence for widespread cytoplas- terning. Then, Antonio Giraldez (Yale,