2006 CDB Symposium ‘Logic of Development’ Draws International Audience

June 20, 2006 – The 4th CDB annual symposium, on the theme, “Logic of Development: New Strategies and Concepts,” drew an audience of more than 160 participants to the CDB for a full program of talks, poster discussions and discussion on April 10-12. The annual symposium series, which was launched in 2002, was established as a forum foraddressing diverse aspects of developmental biology and the mechanisms of regeneration and aims to promote the free, timely and borderless exchange of research achievements. This year’s event was co-organized by the CDB’s Asako Sugimoto, Hiroki R. Ueda and Shigeo Hayashi along with Stephen Cohen of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Germany).

Participants in the 2006 CDB Symposium: “Logic of Development: New Strategies and Concepts”

The three-day program of talks and poster presentations focused on emerging concepts and approaches to the study of fundamental developmental questions, including the surprisingly diverse and important roles of microRNAs; theory, modeling, analysis and synthesis; evolutionary aspects of developmental systems; and functional genomics. A full review of the Symposium, written by Ralf J. Sommer of the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology (Germany), is available in the July issue of the journal Development (subscription required; http://dev.biologists.org/content/vol133/issue13/#MEETING_REVIEW).

This year also marked the launch of a new program to offer a limited number of travel fellowships to young researchers from overseas wishing to attend the Symposium. A total of 17 students and junior scientists from the US, Europe and a number of Asian countries received full subsidies for their round trip travel expenses and accommodation costs in Kobe. The CDB is strongly committed to encouraging and promoting scientific exchange in the Asia-Pacific region and established this fellowship program as a measure of its active support for the Asia-Pacific Developmental Biology Network (http://www.apdbn.org/).

Next year’s CDB Symposium will be held from March 26 – 28, 2007 on the theme of “Germ Line versus Soma: Towards Generating Totipotency.” Prelimiary information is available at http://www.cdb.riken.jp/sympo2007/.