At the start of last month I headed to Singapore for the ISSCR Regional Forum “Global Controls in Stem Cells”. I had a great time and found the meeting a big improvement on last year’s Florence meeting, due to the increase in networking opportunities.

There was a lot of epigenetics at the meeting – as you’d expect given the topic focus. Several people showed the classic Waddington depiction of the epigenetic landscape and explained the need to define where in the landscape the various cell types present during human development lie, plus the different varieties of artificially engineered stem cells. It was fascinating to hear about the various different approaches being taken to address this question.

I don’t have the space to discuss every talk, so here is a brief summary of the sessions and some of the talks.

The first keynote of the meeting was from Rudolf Jaenisch. He started by talking about naïve versus primed embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and whether there is a single human naïve state. He then moved on to talk about finding disease-relevant phenotypes, for example using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). He particularly focused on the need for an appropriate control, he favours an isogenic control to control for genetic background.

The first session was focused on reprogramming, with various researchers talking about their attempts to improve reprogramming and to dissect reprogramming pathways. Jonathan Loh talked about the miniaturised reprogramming system using 384 well plates his group has developed to aid this process. Hongkui Deng finished the morning talks with a fantastic talk about reprogramming human fibroblasts to hepatocytes with drug metabolic function. Up until now reprogrammed hepatocytes have lacked this function, which is so important if hepatocytes derived in this way are going to be used for drug screening.

After lunch there was a session on chromatin dynamics. Bing Ren focused on the functional analysis of transcriptional enhancers and developing a new way to look at gene regulation from a 3D point of view. Sung Hee Baek talked about chromatin modifiers in epigenetic control of cancer and stem cells. Ken Zaret talked about the initiation of cell reprogramming, specifically his efforts to identify “Pioneer factors”, these bind to target genes that will turn on later. The final talk in this session was from Ralf Huss, about using stem cells as drug delivery tools in cancer therapy, due to their propensity to home in on the tumour.

The first session of day 2 was devoted to the developmental biology of pluripotency. Ron McKay, one of the conference organisers, spoke on the need to understand the functional identity of human genomes. Many early lineage cell types can be grown, and the human ESC are all quite different. This variation needs to be understood. Sara-Jane Dunn talked about her computational work modelling pluripotency, an alternative approach to investigating this biological phenomena.

The first session after lunch was on Telomere and RNA biology. V. Narry Kim spoke first. The main focus of her lab is miRNA regulation, but in this talk she talked about RNA-binding proteins in ESC. Next up was Didier Trono who talked about how transposable elements and their epigenetic control mechanisms are key regulators of transcriptional networks in PSCs. Yue Wan talked about the importance of RNA structure in determining RNA function, and the need to learn more about RNA structure. Toshio Suda talked about the aging of hematopoietic stem cells. Stem cells are long lived, and they do change as they age. He talked about the different characteristics of “elderly” stem cells.

The first session of Friday morning was focused to Functional Genomics. Huck Hui Ng gave the first talk, on his work investigating the systems biology of stem cells. Andras Nagy talked about his groups attempts to produce a stable pluripotent cell quite different from ESCs. Frank Buchholz talked about using RNA screens to find modulators and regulators of the pluripotent state.

After lunch there was a Cancer session, covering a wide variety of aspects. Richard Young started the session with a talk about the roles of transcriptional super-enhancers in cell identity and cancer. Zsuzsanna Izavak talked about her recent Nature paper on transcription driven by primate-specific endogenous retrovirus HERVH in naïve stem cells. The HERV driven network partially explains differences in mouse and human stem cells. The significant differences between mouse and human stem cells were mentioned by several of the speakers throughout the conference. Jesse Smith talked about gene transcription inhibitors as potential cancer therapeutics. The rationale being that cancer can be viewed as a disease of de-differentiation, i.e. dysregulated gene transcription.

Yukiko Gotoh talked about regulation of neural stem / progenitor cell fate in the embryonic and adult mouse brain. The basic premise of her work is that embryonic neural stem cells build a brain, whilst adult neural stem cells have a very different role, e.g. in learning and memory.

Janet Rossant gave the closing keynote lecture. She talked about cells in early embryo development and studies looking at when developmental potential is lost, comparing the mouse and human embryo. She also emphasised the differences between mouse and human early embryo development, and the importance of remembering this when studying stem cells.

I very much enjoyed my time in Singapore – it really is a beautiful city. I attended the night safari on the conference networking trip, which was great fun and a really unique experience. I even managed to secure a gift for my children left at home – a lego “Mr Stem Cell” so I can introduce them to the delights of stem cells at an early age!

The last couple of months have been busy for the Nature Protocols editors, with Mel and I both travelling a fair amount. The end of September saw me heading off to Istanbul, Turkey for the EMBO workshop on “Decoding neural circuit structure and function”. I had been thinking a little warmth at the end of September would be a welcome change, but ironically I think it was actually warmer in London! And we didn’t really need all the rain to encourage us to attend sessions, given the excellent line up.

I don’t have the space to discuss all the talks at great length, and it was also encouraging to see so much unpublished data being presented, which I must not share. But here are my highlights.

The first talk of the meeting was by Juergen Knoblich, and it was great to hear about his current projects, using Drosophila genetics to understand cell cycle exit and quiescence plus the contribution of changing the balance of asymmetric versus symmetric divisions in development of various disorders. It was also good to hear that his group are doing more work on the brain organoids, whose creation has already been explained in their group’s recent Nature Protocols article. I was intrigued that a member of the audience asked about the ethical implications of such organoids – it was a question I asked myself whilst editing our article.

I enjoyed learning about behavioural assays using the larval zebrafish from Florian Engert. It was amazing to see what such tiny organisms are capable of. Scott Waddell’s talk was focused to resolving how an animal decides to do the most appropriate thing at a particular moment, using Drosophila as his model system. This question came up as the main research question being addressed in several speaker’s talks.

Another fascinating talk was by Leslie Vosshall on “Sensory cues driving host-seeking behavior in the dengue vector mosquito Aedes aegypti”. Leslie’s groups’ research should help address whether there is any truth in the various old wives tales concerning whether particular factors increase a person’s attractiveness to mosquitos. I spoke to some other researchers about Leslie’s talk and they are confident Leslie will be able to improve the repertoire of molecular biology research tools available for the study of Aedes aegypti. So, it is worth keeping an eye on what Leslie is up to.

The final talk of the conference was by Gero Miesenböck. I very much enjoyed the pictures of the T-maze apparatus his group uses to perform mass behavioural assays in Drosophila.

In addition to all the fabulous talks there were stimulating poster sessions. I particularly liked the poster by Deniz Atasoy from Medipol University, Istanbul, on a Genetically encoded synaptic marker for electron microscopy (GESEM) that he developed. This poster was awarded the Nature Protocols poster prize, going to the poster with the best protocol behind it. Special mention should also go to Xuefan Gao from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tubingen, whose poster on AVEXIS, a protein-protein interaction screen assay, was also very methodological in slant.

Do let us know if you are organising a conference and would like to have a Nature Protocols poster prize as we are always looking out for opportunities to sponsor such prizes.

We also enjoyed conference dinners at Boğaziçi Üniversitesi and on a boat on the Bosphorus – so it wasn’t all work! The conference organisers, Arzu Celik, Nilay Yapici and Hernan Lopez-Schier, deserve a special thank you for being so welcoming and organising such a good program. Istanbul is a beautiful city and well worth a visit.