Join us to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the Company of Biologists!

Biologists @ 100 – incorporating the BSDB spring meting

Registration Now Open

  • Dates: 24th-27th March 2025
    Primary location: ACC Liverpool, UK
    BSDB Organisers: Véronique Azuara, Anahi Binagui-Casas, Shankar Srinivas, Abigail Tucker
  • BSDB conference grants are available to attend this meeting. Apply here.

 

2025 will mark the 100-year anniversary of The Company of Biologists. As part of their celebrations, the Company will be organising Biologists @ 100, a unique conference that will bring together their different communities.

The conference will incorporate the Spring Meetings of the British Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB) and the British Society for Cell Biology (BSCB). It will further include a Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) one-day Satellite Meeting ‘Experimental biology and impact: solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss’, the Journal of Experimental Biology (JEB) Symposium ‘Sensory perception in a changing world’, and a one-day Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM) programme ‘Interdisciplinary approaches to combatting antimicrobial resistance’.

In the plenary sessions, the keynote speakers will consider topics of importance to the whole biological community: climate change and biodiversity, health and disease and emerging technologies.

Registration and abstract submission are now open. To view the programme and register your interest, visit https://biologists.com/100-years/conference.

This conference provides the chance to network and socialise with a wide cross-section of the Cell and Developmental Biology community. We hope you can join us in March 2025 and we look forward to welcoming you!

BSDB Organising Committee

 

In memory of my mentor, colleague and friend, David Ish-Horowicz FRS

David Ish-Horowicz, who died on July 19th just two weeks short of his 76th birthday, pioneered the application of molecular biology to the analysis of Drosophila development in the UK. His laboratory at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) unit in Mill Hill performed ground-breaking studies that paved the way for the molecular revolution that has driven our subject over the last 40 years. He began by cloning and characterising the Drosophila gene hairy, identified as one of the pair-rule class by his friends and colleagues Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus, with whom he had worked in the laboratory of Walter Gehring in Basel. Later, in his lab at the legendary ICRF DBU (Developmental Biology Unit) in Oxford, he applied his skills to the identification and analysis of the Notch ligand, Delta, in vertebrates. His many accomplishments were recognized by the BSDB through the award of the Waddington Medal in 2007. He leaves an indelible mark on the field, both through his research and through the many PhD students and post-docs that he mentored.

 

I first met David exactly 44 years ago this month, at the 1980 EMBO Drosophila Workshop in Crete. This was a meeting reserved for principal investigators to which I had somehow gained admission, despite still being a mere PhD student. As I entered the reception on the first evening, I was feeling extremely nervous and intimidated by all the senior scientists gathered around chatting in groups and was desperately looking around the room for someone who might speak to me. And then I came across David, who, with his characteristic smile, engaged me in conversation about my research interests. He immediately put me at my ease and gave me the confidence to make the most of the meeting, something I will never forget.

Eighteen months later I saw an advertisement for a research fellowship in David’s lab and did not hesitate to apply. David invited me for interview at the ICRF labs in Mill Hill, an experience that for me was both exhilarating and life-changing. We talked all day about how fruit fly embryos develop and his plans to understand the function of the “hairy” gene that he had just succeeded in cloning – one of the first of the so-called segmentation genes to be isolated molecularly. The combination of David’s razor-sharp mind and child-like enthusiasm was irresistible and I did not think twice about accepting when he offered me the post. So began three of the most exciting years of my scientific career. David’s thirst for knowledge was infectious and I could not wait to get into the lab each day to see what new phenomena we would uncover.

The joy of making new discoveries – be they inside or outside the lab – is something David never lost. Indeed, only a few weeks ago when I last visited David and Ros, his wife, in their flat in London, he excitedly told me that he had discovered a new entrance to the Barbican Arts Centre! When he explained that this was located half-way down the ramp to the underground car park, I must admit that I did wonder if his illness (glioblastoma) might be playing tricks with his memory. But I happily agreed to go for a walk with him so that he could show me – and sure enough, as we descended the ramp into the carpark, there was the door that led us straight into the entrance foyer of the centre!

David’s satisfaction at having found the best route into the Barbican from his flat was palpable, a reflection of his constant quest to find the best way of doing everything. This trait was worth its weight in gold to those who worked in his lab – he consumed the scientific literature obsessively and could always tell you the latest and best ways of doing things, often prefaced by “what you should have done”! It was David who introduced me to SP6 polymerase, which revolutionized the synthesis of probes for in situ hybridization. The fact that this superseded the single stranded DNA probes, the synthesis of which David himself had perfected with his post doc, Julian Burke, was of no concern to him – he thrived on technological progress.

Outside the lab, David could always tell you the best places to ski, the best restaurants to eat at, the best wines to drink – the list was endless, informed by his voracious appetite for reading “Which”! There was only one occasion when he got things badly wrong: I had wanted to buy a HiFi so naturally sought his advice. He told me which turntable, amplifier and speakers to buy and which audio store to buy them from, in West Hampstead as it happened, which I duly visited one Saturday afternoon. The next Monday David asked excitedly if I had got everything – “yes” I replied “and I bought a CD player too!” David’s expression immediately changed and he shook his head: “no, no” he exclaimed, “CDs will be obsolete in a couple of years when Sony launch DAT (Digital Audio Tape)” That was in 1984!

Not only was David always happy to give advice, he was also incredibly generous with his time. I recall him staying late one evening to show me how to do colony lifts of a phage library that he had helped me construct in an effort to clone the trithorax gene, something he encouraged me to do in my “spare” time. We did this in his cramped and cluttered lab-cum-office whilst listening to the Archers on the radio! Many years later, after I had moved away from the DBU in Oxford – where we had been colleagues for nearly 10 years – and established what was to become an MRC Centre in Sheffield, I asked David if he would serve on its Scientific Advisory Board. He agreed without hesitation; and most recently it was David to whom I turned when I needed an external assessor on an appointments panel for the Living Systems Institute in Exeter, a role he fulfilled with his customary thoroughness, insight and good humor.

David began his scientific career sequencing a tRNA – he has left us enriched by the qualities denoted by the much shorter sequence of a well-known restriction site, CCGG: Caring, Compassionate, Generous, Genius.

Thank you for everything David – I will miss you.

Philip Ingham FRS

Raymond Schinazi and Family Chair of Life Sciences

University of Bath

2024 BSDB BEDDINGTON MEDAL WINNER: DELAN ALASAADI

The Beddington Medal is the BSDB’s major commendation to promising young biologists, awarded for the best PhD thesis in Developmental Biology defended in the year previous to the award. Rosa Beddington was one of the greatest talents and inspirational leaders in the field of developmental biology. Rosa made an enormous contribution to the field in general and to the BSDB in particular, so it seemed entirely appropriate that the Society should establish a lasting memorial to her. The design of the medal, mice on a stylised DNA helix, is from artwork by Rosa herself.

Like many years, it was a tough decision for the BSBD committee to choose a winner for the 2024 Beddington medal. We are pleased to announce that this goes to Delan Alasaadi, for his PhD work at UCL on the role of tissue mechanics in neural crest induction.

 

I have written many letters on behalf of numerous students to support their applications for various prizes, jobs, and positions, including several previous Beddington Medal applications. However, writing a letter supporting Delan Alasaadi for this award comes with great ease, as Delan has been an excellent Ph.D. student.

Delan developed great curiosity; he continuously engaged with his colleagues in discussions during our lab meetings and beyond. With unique ambition, he sought novel ideas to test in his project. With impeccable determination, breaking the physical barrier, he established collaborations and sought expertise across Europe and other continents, learning the most challenging techniques and valuable lessons.

Delan’s PhD thesis was about the role that tissue mechanics could play in neural crest induction. This was a risky project because of the lack of tools to measure and modify mechanics in vivo. Delan spent the first part of his Ph.D. designing biophysical tools to investigate the feasibility of the question at hand, showing great creativity in his experimental approaches. Embryonic induction is the process by which a group of cells sends signals to adjacent tissues, changing their differentiation fate. An important aspect of embryonic induction, which has been poorly studied, is how the receiving tissue regulates the response to the inductive signals—a process known as ‘competence.’ Additionally, while the molecules involved in embryonic induction have been identified, the role of mechanical cues in this process has remained largely unexplored. Delan found that during early development, the hydrostatic pressure of the blastocoel cavity increases. This increase is sensed by the ectoderm cells above the cavity, modulating Yap activity, which in turn regulates the response to Wnt signaling—a key player during neural crest induction. Thus, Delan found, for the first time, the mechanism that could explain the loss of neural crest competence during development: the increased hydrostatic pressure leads to the retention of Yap/b-catenin in the cytoplasm, impairing neural crest induction even in the presence of the inducer Wnt (loss of competence). Delan showed that this mechanism is conserved in embryos of different species (e.g., amphibians, mice, humans). This work has been recently accepted in Nature Cell Biology (2024), with Delan as the sole first author.

There are two important aspects of how Delan approaches research that make him a deserving winner of the Beddington Medal:

Fearless and ambitious: There was not a single technique or experiment that Delan did not learn if he considered it necessary to address his PhD project. Consequently, he set up in my lab many techniques that we did not have, such as micropipette aspiration, microcomputed tomography, Micro-pressure probe (servo-null) to measure hydrostatic pressure, and in vivo biophysical tools among others.

 Commitment: Not only did he work countless hours and overcome the limitations of developing his PhD during the COVID-19 pandemic, but he also showed a commitment to his work and experiments that is difficult to find. Just one example: he wanted to measure the hydrostatic pressure inside the embryo, but there are only a few labs worldwide that have the equipment and expertise to do it. He found a lab in the Netherlands that could teach him the technique, but we failed to get a source of Xenopus embryos from the Netherlands; instead, we got embryos from Belgium. So, every day, Delan had to travel to Belgium in the morning, get recently fertilized embryos that he kept in a low-temperature incubator on the train, and rush back to the lab in the Netherlands to conduct the experiments. He succeeded!

In addition to his main Ph.D. work accepted in Nature Cell Biology, he is the co-first author of another paper published in Developmental Biology about neural crest migration and the first author in a two-author review to be published in the journal Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences titled “Mechanically guided cell fate determination in early development,” written entirely by Delan.

In conclusion, Delan has been the only and mighty driving force behind his PhD work, identifying for the first time that mechanics (hydrostatic pressure) controls embryonic competence. His findings resolve a 100-year-old question: how embryonic competence is regulated, and which implications in stem cell research and cell therapy approaches? He is a motivated and dedicated young researcher, and all his efforts deserve to be recognized with an award such as the Beddington Medal. Therefore, I support this application in the strongest way possible.

  • Roberto Mayor

Published work:

Alasaadi DN, Mayor R. Mechanically guided cell fate determination in early development. Cell Mol Life Sci. 2024 May 30;81(1):242. doi: 10.1007/s00018-024-05272-6. PMID: 38811420; PMCID: PMC11136904.

Alasaadi DN, et.al. Competence for neural crest induction is controlled by hydrostatic pressure through Yap. Nat Cell Biol. 2024 Apr;26(4):530-541. doi: 10.1038/s41556-024-01378-y. Epub 2024 Mar 18. PMID: 38499770; PMCID: PMC11021196.

Barriga EH, Alasaadi DN, et. al. RanBP1 plays an essential role in directed migration of neural crest cells during development. Dev Biol. 2022 Dec;492:79-86. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2022.09.010. Epub 2022 Oct 4. PMID: 36206829.

2024 CHERYLL TICKLE MEDAL WINNER: PETRA HAJKOVA

In 2016, the BSDB introduced the Cheryll Tickle Medal, which is being awarded annually to a mid-career, female scientist for her outstanding achievements in the field of Developmental Biology.

The BSDB is proud to announce the 2024 awardee is Prof.  Petra Hajkova!

 

It is with great pleasure that we nominate Professor Petra Hajkova for the Cheryll Tickle Medal. Petra has become such an established member of the field that it will surprise many to learn that she started her lab just 14 years ago. In this short time she has risen through the ranks at the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences (LMS) from junior group leader (2009) to Epigenetic Section Chair (2018) and on to the Interim Director (2021-2022). All the while she has continued to make the major scientific contributions that have been her hallmark since the start of her research career.

Petra’s interest in DNA methylation started while she was an undergraduate, studying the expression of integrated viral sequences. In her PhD, Petra developed bisulphite sequencing methods and applied them to study epigenetic reprogramming in primordial germ cells (PGCs), in a now classic paper, with >1300 citations (Hajkova et al., 2002, Mech Dev). This longstanding interest in, and fundamental understanding of, DNA methylation underpins her rigorous approach to investigating epigenetic reprogramming and DNA demethylation in PGCs and the zygote; in a field in which many ideas have come and gone. Her postdoctoral studies with Azim Surani further characterised changes in chromatin accompanying DNA demethylation in PGCs (Hajkova et al., 2008, Nature). In a landmark paper Petra and Azim connected DNA demethylation in PGCs to the base excision repair pathway (Hajkova et al., 2010, Science). Petra’s subsequent work has shown that, in contrast to the prevailing dogma, Tet-mediated hydroxylation is not required for DNA demethylation, either in the zygote (Amouroux et al., 2016, Nature Cell Biology) or in PGCs (Hill et al., 2018, Nature). Rather Tet proteins protect against de novo demethylation following reprogramming. Further mechanistic work in the zygote showed that continuous histone replacement is required for transcriptional regulation and epigenetic programming (Nashun et al., 2015, Mol Cell).

How the epigenome is regulated in different pluripotent states – both in vivo and in vitro – has been an ongoing interest. Petra was the first to show that mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) grown in 2i media exhibit global DNA hypomethylation (Leitch et al., 2013, NSMB). This study also demonstrated that mouse embryonic germ (EG) cells are transcriptionally indistinguishable from ESCs, arguing against an epigenetic or transcriptional memory of their distinct origins. More recently, with Anja Groth, Petra has developed isolation of DNA by 5-ethynyl-deoxyuridine labelling for mass spectrometry (iDEMS) (Stewart-Morgan et al., 2023, Nature Cell Biology). A versatile technique with many applications, this provided new insights into the restoration kinetics of DNA methylation in ES cells, revealing that maintenance methylation fails to keep up with cell division in mouse ES cells.

Petra has also influenced how we view the biological function of epigenetic reprogramming. Her work suggests that this process is required to enable PGCs to transition to gonocytes and prepare cells to initiate meiosis, rather than simply achieving imprint erasure (Hill et al., 2018, Nature). A more recent study revealed sex-specific epigenetic regulation and the necessity for dynamic alterations in repressive chromatin in PGCs (Huang et al., 2021, Nature). Conceptually this distinguishes epigenetic regulation in the germline, a lineage characterised by developmental reprogramming from that in soma which undergoes progressive differentiation. Overall, Petra has made key contributions to our understanding of epigenetic regulation during germline and pre-implantation development. Petra is also highly collaborative, as evidenced by an array of insightful publications across diverse fields, including myeloid cancer, microglial biology, alternative TSS usage, sperm biology and nematode evolution.

Beyond research, Petra is an excellent colleague and leader, as evidenced by her prize for mentoring and the plaudits she received as leader of the LMS Epigenetics section, which scored highly at quinquennial review. During turbulent times, she stepped up to be interim director at the LMS, where she championed the cause that fundamental research should remain central to the new strategy envisioned for the LMS. Petra’s other prizes and achievements are detailed in her CV, and we would strongly advocate that the Cheryll Tickle Medal is added to these.

    • Harry Leitch
    • Ian Chambers

2024 WOLPERT MEDAL WINNER: SALLY LOWELL

Following the sad passing of one of the greats of Developmental Biology, Lewis Wolpert, the BSDB committee has decided to launch a new annual medal in his honour. Lewis was well known for his ability to distil our subject’s most engaging and fundamental problems into concise and well-grounded core concepts of Biology. This led to vastly important contributions to research in our field, but also to the communication of its problems to a broader audience. Through teaching, popular science writing and acting as a spokesperson for Science as a whole, Lewis inspired many of us into the deeper study of Developmental Biology. Therefore, our annual ‘Wolpert medal’ will be presented to an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to the teaching and communication of Developmental Biology.We are very happy to announce that this year’s  winner of the BSDB Wolpert medal is Prof. Sally Lowell from the University of Edinburgh.

 

Until a few months ago, Sally was our BSDB meeting secretary and she was outstanding in this role, bringing many new initiatives including the BSDB childcare and disability travel awards. She pushed hard in many ways for diversity, inclusivity and sustainability, so that during her tenure the BSDB became one of the leading drivers of new ways of running conferences.  This climaxed with our recent hosting of the European Dev Biol Congress where she pushed for – and made work – a programme made up largely of ECR speakers from across Europe, with a unique three hub arrangement with interdigitating talks beamed in from Paris and Barcelona to the central host hub of Oxford.  This was a pioneering “experiment” that could have gone badly wrong, but instead worked exceptionally well, and will have set a precedent for others to follow. Several colleagues from sister dev biol societies across Europe congratulated us on how brave the BSDB was to run such a meeting and how successful it had been.  This kudos for the BSDB was largely down to Sally.

Over the years, Sally has also held and still holds numerous other, largely unsung, roles in the dev biol and broader scientific community.  Some of those that are most relevant in the context of this Medal for communication and outreach include:

She is a Director of the CoB and chair of their sustainable conferencing initiative;

She is Co-Organiser (since 2014) of the Hydra summer school in stem cell and regenerative medicine;

She is part of the “prelights” scientific advisory group, which promotes open science and supporting of ECRs.

She is a trustee and the treasurer of the stem cell education and charitable initiative to support various science education projects;

She is the member for education on the Int Soc Stem Cell Research committee;

She is the outreach coordinator for the “Self organising built environment” with the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL, which explores links between dev biol and urban planning.

Sally instigated and has been involved in the set up and running of several sci-art exhibitions, linked to the BSDB Spring meeting. These have reached audiences outside of the developmental biology community.

All of these things that Sally has been doing for our community have helped popularise and widen participation in stem cell and developmental biology. In addition, she is also an outstanding scientist as reflected in her recent award in 2022 of the Int Soc Diffn, Anne McClaren Award for Outstanding Women in Dev Biol, and also being appointed a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (also in 2022). This makes her voice even more significant and she is a fabulous role model to all young scientists of how to be both collegiate and kind as well as an exceptional scientist.  We think she is someone who is worthy of the Wolpert medal through the numerous ways she enables and facilitates cross communication and success in others in our field, and we know she would be a fantastic ambassador for the BSDB when she gives her Wolpert medal tour lectures.

  • Paul Martin
  • Jens Januschke
  • Cynthia Andoniadou