Cell News 04/2019
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MEETING REPORT
Sandra Junglen from the Charité Universitätsmedezin, Berlin.
PD Junglen investigates mosquito-borne viruses in Africa and
discussed the role of the mosquito vectors in virus spread and
transmission to human populations.
Prof. Stephan Becker from the University Marburg gave the
second enlightening keynote, entitled “Reaching borders: intra-
cellular transport of filoviruses”. Prof. Becker devoted his career
to studying the filoviruses, among others Ebola and Marburg
viruses. His work is an excellent illustration of how viruses can
contribute to improve our understanding of complex cell bio-
logical processes such as actin cortex and network modeling.
The third exciting keynote, “Tick cell lines: tools for zoonotic
virus research”, was given by Dr. Lesley Bell-Sakyi from the
University of Liverpool, United-Kingdom. Dr. Bell-Sakyi dedi-
cated her career to studying ticks. She established more than
30 tick cell lines. She put a particular emphasis on the Tick
Cell Biobank, from where all of her tick cell lines are available
to the community. Dr. Bell-Sakyi then explained how these
materials constitute important tick vector cell model systems
that can help to improve our understanding of the numerous
zoonotic pathogens transmitted by ticks.
Prof. Alain Kohl from the MRC-University of Glasgow, United
Kingdom, gave the final keynote on “Zika virus interactions
with innate immunity and neurotropism”. He beautifully
described latest cutting-edge research progresses on the global
emerging flavivirus Zika. His work shows the importance to
better define the cell biology of emerging viruses to prevent
infection of humans and other mammalian hosts.
This year, for the third time an interactive session on scien-
tific editing was organized. To this end, Prof. Karen Mossman,
MacMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, was invited as an
academic editor at PLoS Pathogens. She gave an entertain-
ing and insightful talk on “Combatting “fake news”: how to
structure and disseminate research findings to effectively
reach your targeted audience”. The presentation addressed the
editorial process and pitfalls during manuscript submission.
Prof. Mossman also gave a lot of hints to improve the writing
and presentation of a manuscript. This provided an excellent
platform for students to interactively discuss questions re-
garding the submission of their scientific work to international
peer-reviewed journals such as PLoS Pathogens.
Among the many excellent student presentations, the prize
committee had the hard task to select one prize winner for the
best oral presentation. Dr. Yasutsugu Suzuki from the group of
Dr. Maria-Carla Saleh at Pasteur Institute, Paris, France was
awarded the prize of the best oral presentation for his work
entitled “Functional investigation of endogenous flaviviral
elements in Aedes mosquitoes”.
As the last two years, the 2019 workshop featured a poster
session in addition to the oral communications. The post-
er session was extremely well attended with many fruitful
discussions in a friendly environment. This year, the audience
voted for the best poster presentation. Dr. Psylvia Léger from
the Lozach lab, University of Heidelberg, received the award for
the best poster presentation for her work on “Virus-encoded
amyloidogenic protein”.
According to immediate feedback from participants ranging
from students to keynote speakers, everybody praised the high
quality of all presentations, the friendly and engaging dis-
cussions that lasted until the last glass of wine. In particular
the students appreciated the feedback on their work and also
the possibility to discuss career perspectives in research with
young and senior PIs.
The organizers would like to thank the German Research Plat-
form for Zoonoses, the German Society for Virology (GfV), and
the German Society for Cell Biology (DGZ) for their support.
The workshop would also not have been possible without gen-
erous contributions from the Chica and Heinz Schaller (CHS)
Foundation as well as the company ReBlikon.
This was the third and final year for Dr. Pierre-Yves Lozach
and Dr. Gisa Gerold to host the workshop. The co-coordinator
positions have been passed, upon voting, to Dr. Thomas Hoenen
from Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut and Dr. Eva Herker from the
University of Marburg. They will continue the tradition of a
lively and student friendly meeting at the Kloster Schoental.
More information and updates can be found on the workshop’s
website
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