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EMBLetcetera

The Newsletter of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory

Issue 54 • December 2009 • www.embl.org/newsletter

Bernd-Uwe retiresOut with a bangChristmas is fast approaching, butthat hasn’t stopped the plethora ofgreat scientific papers that’s beencoming out of EMBL lately. In aStructural and Computational Biol-ogy Unit project, several groups havepublished in Science about the firstcomprehensive picture of a minimalcell (page 2); Mathias Treier’s group’s‘gender-bending’ mice appear in Cell(page 9); Jan Ellenberg’s group has re-vealed that fractals could be usefultools to describe the behaviour ofmolecules in the nucleus (page 9); andNadia Rosenthal’s group has linked akey signalling pathway to heart devel-opment and healing (page 5). Mean-while, Toby Gibson has been courtingcontroversy with his opinions onover-simplified perspectives in TiBS(page 8).

Intermedex adjustments, longer postdoc contracts, and some dates foryour diaries...

In EMBL’s final Council meeting in 2009, which took place in Rome, delegates welcomed some newfaces as well as saying goodbye to some old ones. They made decisions about the future ratio ofEMBL Health Insurance Scheme contributions, the length of postdoc contracts at EMBL and somenew equipment for GeneCore. During the next few months EMBL will be busy preparing the newfive-year Programme for the period 2012-2016, which Council uses to decide on EMBL’s budget.More on page 2.

When a monkcame toEMBLpage 5

10Buildingbridges: thepostdoc retreat8

How can wefeed theworld?

EMBL intranet:we wantyour news!3

Winter Council meeting: outcomes

page 3

After eight years at EMBL, administrative director Bernd-Uwe Jahn retires at the end of 2009. Theman described by Chair of Council Eero Vuorio as “a warm-hearted connoisseur of wine and goodfood with a great sense of humour”, as well as someone “with a thorough knowledge and understand-ing of the rules and procedures of Council and the laboratory, who could be depended on for imme-diate and correct answers” tells Lena Raditsch about his future plans.

EMBL&cetera • December 20092

Intermedex adjustments, longer postdoccontracts, and some dates for your diaries...

MBL’s Winter Council meeting tookplace in Rome on 24 November with

the following outcomes.

Health insuranceAs of 2010 the ratio of EMBL Health In-

surance Scheme contributions will changeto a third for employee and two thirds foremployer – as was the case prior to 2003 –which means that the contribution paid bystaff increases by 0.1% of basic salary and by2.1% for EMBL. Additionally, new provi-sions on additional reimbursement, physio-therapy and kinesitherapy, and dentalprostheses and dentofacial orthopedic treat-ment will apply on all treatment taken after1 January. All medical bills should be sentdirectly to the patient for authorisation be-fore payment by Intermedex.

ATC openingThe official opening ceremony for the

ATC, to which science ministers of theEMBL member states, EU representativesand other stakeholders have been invited,has been scheduled to 9 March.

Postdoc contractsEMBL Council decided to increase the

standard initial period of EMBL postdoccontracts from one to two years and to ex-tend the maximum normal duration of thefellowships from four to five years.

EMBL programmeThe production of the new five-year

EMBL Programme 2012-2016 – the docu-ment that details the plans of all EMBL ac-tivities, including research, services,training, outreach, technology transfer, ad-ministration and EMBL’s function in the Eu-ropean research landscape – has begun.Based on this document and the correspon-ding Indicative Scheme, Council will decideon EMBL’s budget for the period in 2011.

SAC reviewsThe next SAC reviews are scheduled on

30-31 March for the Core Facilities in Hei-delberg, 5-6 May for Heidelberg’s Structuraland Computational Biology Unit and 7-8May for the review of the EMBL Pro-

gramme 2012-2016. Two new SAC mem-bers, Reinhard Jahn and Tom W. Muir, havebeen elected to replace Herbert Jäckle andWerner Kühlbrandt.

Other newsThe Genomics Core Facility has permis-

sion to purchase two new generationgenome analyser sequencing systems tomeet the strong demand for this technology.

ELIXIR, the project led by EBI DirectorJanet Thornton that aims to develop a pan-European infrastructure for biological infor-mation, will be supported by a consortiumof member states. Two have made financialcommitments; the UK awarded £10m, andthe Swedish Research Council will give€1.7m over three years.

Babis Savakis (Greece) stepped down asChair of EMBL Council and Eero Vuorio(Finland) was elected as new Chair. An-nemarie Frischauf (Austria) was re-electedas Vice Chair and Reinhard Lührmann(Germany) will replace Juan Modolell(Spain) as second Vice Chair.

E

Winter Councilmeeting: outcomes

A collaboration of EMBL scientists past andpresent have produced the first comprehen-sive picture of a minimal cell, based on aquantitative study of the bacterium My-coplasma pneumoniae that causes atypicalpneumonia – and found that even the sim-plest of cells is more complex than expected.

In three papers published back-to-back inScience, research groups from the Structural

and Computational BiologyUnit – including the Rus-sell, Böttcher and Frangakisgroups – in a partnershipwith the Centre de Regula-

cio Genómica (CRG) in Barcelona, uncoverthe indispensable ingredients required toproduce a cell that can survive on its own.

Led by EMBL’s Peer Bork and Anne-Claude Gavin, together with EMBL alumnusand head of the Systems Biology Depart-ment at CRG Luis Serrano, the groups stud-iedM. pneumoniae, one of the smallestprokaryotes, complex enough to survive onits own yet simple enough to represent aminimal cell – and to enable a global analy-sis. “We found features that not even thesimplest organism can do without and thathave remained untouched by millions ofyears of evolution – the bare essentials oflife,” says Anne-Claude.

Remarkably, the regulation of this bac-terium’s transcriptome is much more similar

to that of eukaryotes than previouslythought; and although its genes are arrangedin groups, as is typical of bacteria,M. pneu-moniae can selectively express or repress in-dividual genes within each group.

Additionally, its metabolism doesn’t ap-pear to be geared towards multiplying asquickly as possible, perhaps because of itspathogenic lifestyle; another surprise wasthe fact that, although it has a very smallgenome, the bacterium is incredibly flexibleand readily adjusts its metabolism to drasticchanges in environment. These are featuresit shares with more complex organisms.

“Within EMBL’s Structural and Computa-tional Biology Unit we have a unique combi-nation of methods, and we pooled them alltogether for this project,” says Peer.

Collaboration reveals what a self-sufficient cell can’t do without

Left: Peer, who recentlyreceived the Royal Societyand Académie des SciencesMicrosoft Award

Photo:M

ariettaSchup

p

EMBL&cetera • December 2009 3

ernd-Uwe throws open the door andwith a wide, welcoming gesture, invites

me to take a seat. It’s a familiar scene in theDG office: even in frantic times he folds hisarms behind his head, starts with a chat andunhurriedly listens to your questions.

“I had quite a good idea what to expectfrom EMBL, and actually that’s why I ap-plied for the job in the first place,” he tellsme. Long before coming to EMBL in 2001,Bernd-Uwe began his career in the GermanFederal Ministry for Research and Technol-ogy. During this time he served as the Ger-man delegate not only on EMBL’s councilbut also on the governing boards of CERN,ESO, ILL and ESRF.

“Directing the adminstration at EMBL wasa logical step with which to finish my career,and it was also a most enjoyable way to doso.” Although Bernd-Uwe was always proudof being a civil servant in the ministry hegreatly appreciated the working conditionsat EMBL which allowed him to successfullyshape the administration in a positive andconstructive environment. During his time,new personnel and financial systems wereimplemented and processes now run muchmore smoothly, providing useful and valuedservices to the scientists. “Before I came toEMBL I held the same position at the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin,” he says. “Iwouldn’t have wanted to go back to my pre-vious role in the ministry.”

When I ask him what he expects from histime after EMBL and from his retirement,he can’t hide a certain melancholy. “If Ihadn’t reached retirement age maybe I’dhave stayed a little longer.” He mulls it over.“No – it’s better to leave with acceptance.”

On the other hand, there are plenty of

things he’s looking forward to. “For too long,I’ve neglected my health and fitness, and fi-nally I will have the time to go for walks orgo swimming,” he says. “I love gardening, soby the time I’ve managed to prune my treesand bushes, I’ll be fit anyway!“

His professional life often entailed lots oftravelling, staying away from home and hisfamily – and Bernd-Uwe is a real patriarch.“I’ve got three sons and a daughter, and sixgrandchildren with number seven soon toarrive,” he smiles. “I won’t be travelling any-more; I’ll stay at home, and we’ll eventually

Got some news to convey to the EMBLcommunity?

A new section on the intranet portalpage is now being used for internal news(see the ‘News’ section on the left handcolumn on http://intranet.embl.de/index.php). More immediate and flexi-ble than the newsletter, it offers a furtheropportunity to present your news to therest of EMBL.

As scientific stories are already coveredin the Press Releases section, the types ofarticles covered in News might includeretreat announcements, building inau-gurations, awards and achievements,new people at EMBL, or announcementsabout new initiatives or services. Thenews appears on the intranet pages atHeidelberg, Grenoble, Hamburg andMonterotondo, so articles of interest tothe entire EMBL community are ideal.

Each story is flagged on the intranetportal page for a day or two until it is re-placed with a new one, and all storiesend up in an archive page for an at-a-glance round-up of recent events (http://intranet.embl.de/communication_outreach/internal_news/index.html).

If you have any news that should beconsidered for the EMBL intranet,

please write to info@embl.de.

If you have any submissions for the EMBLintranet’s Picture of the Day, please alsosend them to info@embl.de. They need bevaguely EMBL-related and from anyoutstation or EMBL location, andpreferably in landscape format (they’ll be180px x 80px on the web). Perhaps youhave a cool scientific image, or a snapshotof a recent EMBL get-together?No full-frontal nudity please!

Also required: pictures please!

“I enjoyed my time at EMBL enormously”

Retiring administrativedirector Bernd-Uwe Jahntells Lena Raditsch abouthis mixed emotions onleaving EMBL

Right: Bernd-Uwe (secondfrom right) and two of hissons and daughters-in-lawenjoying a skiing holiday

EMBL intranet: we want your news!

B move back to the family home near Bonn. Iwant to spend as much time as I can withmy growing number of grandchildren.”

He seems to find his peace of mind enjoy-ing the simple things in life. “There are somany beautiful places for excursions nearby,and what I like best is visiting a nice castleafter a long walk and stopping for a bite toeat and a decent glass of wine.” And whowould blame him?

Everyone is welcome to attend Bernd-Uwe’s farewell party in the ATC on 8 March.See page 11 for more details.

EMBL&cetera • December 20094

Quantity and qualityWould you want to live a longer life? If youcould avoid some of the potential downsidesto ageing, such as weaker bones and mem-ory loss, perhaps. Recent research at Univer-sity College London (UCL) and EMBL-EBIhas provided an insight into the biologicalpathways that can influence longevity andhealthy ageing. In a study mimicking the ef-fects of calorie restriction, scientists rearedlong-lived mice that were fitter and sufferedfewer age-related disorders than ordinarymice.

The UCL researchers bred mice that wereunable to produce S6 Kinase 1 (S6K1) – akey protein in a nutrient-sensing pathwaythat enables them to respond appropriatelyto changing food levels. The crucial link be-tween changes to this pathway and the ef-fects of calorie restriction was confirmed byresearchers in Janet Thornton’s group atEMBL-EBI, who found that the patterns ofgenes that are switched on or off in the micelacking the S6K1 gene were similar to those

seen in ordinary mice that have been fed acalorie-restricted diet.

In contrast to wild-type mice, femaleslacking S6K1 had a 20% longer lifespan, aleaner body – despite actually eating more –and stronger bones. They were less likely todevelop type 2 diabetes and had better bal-ance, strength and coordination. They werealso more inquisitive, and even their im-mune systems appeared more ‘youthful’.

These results, published on 2 October inScience, suggest that disrupting the S6K1pathway can lead to longer lives and healthyageing, at least in females: males didn’t livelonger, but they did experience many of thesame health benefits.

If mice can live longer, why not humans?Although this would be challenging to studyexperimentally, bioinformatics could con-tinue to provide useful insights; compar-isons of the pathway in mice and humanscould shed light on whether they share simi-lar mechanisms, for example. Looking fur-ther forward, software may one day be ableto model how calorie restriction may affecthumans, or to search for potential drug tar-gets in the S6K1 pathway that could assisthealthy ageing. “The molecular basis of age-ing is still far from understood, but it is clearthat bioinformatics will be an important toolto unravel the complex pathways and net-works involved,” says Janet.

Photo: ESRF

EMBL Grenoble’s campus, the PolygoneScientifique, is to be developed into aworld-class science and technology park –an ‘ecosystem’ of innovation – in an initia-tive supported by the French government.

GIANT’s first construction projects arealready underway and mark the beginningof a €500m overhaul for the area, whichhas long boasted a top-class research infra-structure which includes the ESRF, theILL, EMBL and the CNRS, as well as threecentres of technological excellence andseveral high-level university programmes.

With the planned new teaching and re-search buildings, recreational facilities andmeeting places for researchers, transportlinks and sustainable housing, it is pro-jected that the site will welcome 20,000 sci-entists and students and 10,000 inhabitantsby the year 2015.

The entrance to the site will also feature aVisitors’ Centre, which will present thework of all the campus’ scientific institutesto the growing numbers of interestedmembers of the public using videos, mod-els and interactive exhibits.

Even their immunesystems appearedmore ‘youthful’

Open doors at the EBI

More than 30 students and early-stageresearchers gathered at the EMBL-EBIOpen Day on 3 November to enjoy a seriesof interactive talks and presentations aboutthe EBI’s cutting edge research, servicesand working environment. The visitorsgained an insight into life at the EBI fromPhD student Heidi Dvinge and attended anengaging talk on bioinformatics careeropportunities from Dean of GraduateStudies Helke Hillebrand. The popularlunchtime demonstration session also gavevisitors the chance to quiz the experts face-

to-face on the EBI’s core resources.Comments were captured on post-it notes(above), allowing the EBI’s Outreach andTraining team to monitor which aspects ofthe day the visitors most enjoyed.

The Open Day is ideal for young scientistsor anyone else who is keen find out moreabout the EBI’s activities, or who wants toexplore career opportunities inbioinformatics. The next will be held on 4March 2010. To register, please visitwww.ebi.ac.uk/training/openday.

A GIANT undertaking

EMBL&cetera • December 2009 5

EMBL scientists have been the first to link akey signalling pathway to heart developmentand healing, indicating that it may play an im-portant role in heart attack recovery.

Almost a century after it was discovered infruit flies with notches in their wings, theNotch signalling pathway – a molecularmechanism through which cells communi-cate – has been proven to target heart mus-cle cells.

Scientists in head of outstation NadiaRosenthal’s group used genetic mouse mod-els to uncover critical roles for this pathway.When they inactivated Notch specifically inthe heart muscle precursor cells of early

mouse embryos, the scientists discoveredthat the mice developed heart defects. Curi-ously, increasing Notch signalling in theheart muscle cells of older embryos had thesame detrimental effect, uncovering differ-ent requirements for Notch as developmentproceeds.

“The cardiac malformations we observedare characteristic of Alagille syndrome, ahuman congenital disorder,” says PaschalisKratsios, first author on the paper publishedonline on 10 December in Circulation Re-search. “Therefore, our findings could helpto explain the cardiac symptoms associatedwith Alagille syndrome and related forms of

congenital heart disease.”Intriguingly, the scientists were able to im-

prove the cardiac function and survival rateof adult mice that had suffered heart attacksby re-activating Notch, suggesting new ther-apeutic approaches to help the heart recoverfrom damage.

“Overall, these results highlight the impor-tance of timing and context in biologicalcommunication mechanisms,” concludesNadia Rosenthal. “Our findings also lendsupport to the notion that, in certain situa-tions, redeployment of embryonic signallingpathways could prove beneficial for tissueregeneration in the adult.”

From fruit fly wings to heart failure – why Not(ch)?

When a monk came to EMBL

Whatever next? The Dalai Lama’s French interpreter!

ow did you become a monk in a Bud-dhist monastery in Tibet?

I was doing a PhD [in Nobel-prize winnerFrancois Jacob’s lab] when in 1967 I went toIndia for the first time. I went back andforth for many years, and then slowly re-alised that it was where I wanted to be. Itwas like self-discovery. I decided that Iwanted to live in the Himalayas, and I was30 when I decided to become a monk.How did you become the French inter-preter for the Dalai Lama?He was my teacher’s student. Once I hap-pened to be with him in France and he hadto speak in Tibetan to his English translatorand someone else would translate it intoFrench and he said, why don’t you do it? So Ibecame his interpreter.You’ve gone back to science to take partin some neuroscientific experiments.How did that come about?Some people from the Mind and Life Insti-tute [in Boulder, Colorado] approached us.Their research projects investigate the neu-robiological effects of meditation on long

term meditators, and when the scientistsasked me to volunteer I said yes. The DalaiLama hadn’t known I was a scientist myselfuntil then.How did it feel then to go back to the lab?Frankly, it was mostly fun. I only do the in-teresting parts; they spend months analysingthe data and I don’t have to do anything. Idon’t have to apply for grants. I take part inthe exciting parts and not the tedious ones.How would you describe the relationshipbetween Buddhism and science?In some religions, some truths of sciencedon’t work. The universe being created inseven days is a big problem for science. Wedon’t have anything like that. The Buddhistsadded cosmology, which was borrowedfrom the Hindus – not a big deal. If itdoesn’t fit, so what? We drop it, no problem– nobody minds. The main thing is aboutthe mind, about changing the mind and thescience of mind. We’re looking for truth –we’re not trying to prove that a particulartruth is the truth. That’s why Buddhists feelvery comfortable with scientists.

You were once labelled the happiest per-son in the world.That’s just a headline. It’s just the gammawave when you meditate on compassion. Itwas after an experiment with 15 subjects,and I wasn’t even the one with the highestamplitudes measured – I just happened tobe the first. Of course I have a higher ampli-tude than most other subjects, but it hasnothing to do with happiness.Is there anything that really annoys you?You can feel indignation sometimes at peo-ple not doing what is right, but not in a neg-ative way; you don’t want to harm anyone,for sure. Sometimes I get a bit anxious, likewhen I nearly miss a plane – but so what?There’s not much you can do, so why worry?What’s your cure for a negative emotion?Well, it’s rejoicing, or at least not being af-fected by it in your own freedom. Don’t becaught up in it. If you’re jealous of someonebecause of their success it doesn’t diminishthat success – it just affects you, making youthe victim. You just need to free yourselffrom that.

H

Following his Science and Society Forum lecture,‘Train your mind, change your brain’ at EMBL

Heidelberg, Angela Michel and Marlene Rau caughtup with Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard to talk about

science, Buddhism...and how to be happy

EMBL&cetera • December 20096

The great and the goodYou may have noticed a strange new instal-lation in the EMBL Heidelberg canteen oneday last month; a screened-off area awayfrom the hoi polloi (that’s you), behindwhich some very important people in suitswere having their lunch.

The day was 19 November, the occasionwas the EIROforum DG assembly, and thebigwigs were the leaders of the seven inter-governmental research organisations thatcomprise EIROforum (EMBL, CERN, ILL,ESRF, ESA, ESO and EFDA-JET).

The meeting was held at EMBL because itis the institute’s turn as EIROforum chairuntil 10 July. The directors meet twice ayear to discuss EIROforum business, andthis get-together was especially importantas it coincides with the preparation of therenewal of the partnership’s Statement ofIntent with the European Commission,which outlines the joint activities and plansfor the ongoing collaboration.

Other issues discussed were the partners’needs in relation to the new EU frameworkprogramme, FP8, which will succeed FP7 in2013. One of the ways in which EIROforumis most effective is as a combined voice ininteractions with the EC and other organsof the European Union.

Also discussed was the future of theEIROforum-funded journal for scienceteachers, Science in School, which is pro-duced at EMBL. Later, the DGs presentedsome scientific highlights from their insti-tutes, with EMBL DG Iain Mattaj citing

some of the year’s achievements by LarsSteinmetz and Andreas Ladurner in partic-ular.

The EIROforum collaboration began in2002 and involves Europe’s seven most in-fluential intergovernmental scientific re-search organisations – the vanguard ofEuropean science – with the primary goalof promoting the quality and impact of Eu-ropean research.

With research collaborations, conferences,technology exchange and outreach initia-tives – such as Science in School, Science onStage (see box, right) and the new EIROfo-rum Teacher School series, the first ofwhich recently took place at CERN – thepartners mobilise their expertise in basic re-search and in the management of large in-ternational infrastructures to benefitEuropean research and development.

The future of one of EIROforum’s mostsuccessful initiatives, Science on Stage,was secured in October. Its interna-tional committee decided that the net-work of local, national and internationalevents to identify innovative scienceteachers and exchange ideas and activi-ties would continue even though the ECgrant has expired.

“I’m delighted that Science on Stagehas gained so much momentum,” saysEleanor Hayes, who represented EIRO-forum at the meeting. “In future, thenational organisers will pass the flame,competing to host the internationalfestival every two years.” The next festi-val will be in Copenhagen in April2011.www.science-on-stage.eu

Stage two

There were more sharp suits than everbefore in the Operon on 18-19 Novem-ber for the EIROforum conference onTechnology Transfer and the EuropeanResearch Area, which was funded by anFP7 grant from the EC. Politicians, rep-resentatives from industry and membersof the European Commission, the Euro-pean Investment Bank and the EuropeanPatent Office gathered with technologytransfer professionals and decision mak-ers in the EIROforum member institutes,scientists from EMBL and other researchcommunities for the two-day look at thebusiness side of the scientific world.

Topics covered included technologytransfer (TT) setup requirements and ECrecommendations, as well the status ofthe EIROforum organisations. MartinRaditsch of EMBLEM, EMBL’s TT com-pany, summarised that three of theEIROforum institutes have their owntech transfer organisations, one is out-sourcing, and two of the remaining three

have policies already in place to allowsuch activities to be developed. EU rep-resentative Tiit Jurimae acknowledgedthe importance of TT and advised thatfunding for it should be provided as partof a research institute’s basic budget.

There was also time for some newsfrom EMBL’s spin-out companies. JoeLewis, Head of EMBL’s Chemical BiologyCore Facility and co-founder and CEOof Elara Pharmaceuticals, announcedthat the business had received an addi-tional €2m from the BMBF GOBio andthe Biotechnologie Rhein-NeckarSpitzencluster programs, leading to totalfunding of €4.6m.

“It was a good networking opportunity,and interesting to hear about the otherEIROforum members’ TT organisationscompared to EMBLEM, confirming itsgood standing,” commented attendeeJürgen Zimmermann, robotics engineerin the Genomics Core Facility.

EIROforum members go Tech Transfer

A consortium of EMBL, the EuropeanSynchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF)and the Indian government will takeover the running of the BM14 beamlineat the ESRF in Grenoble for five years.

ESRF’s Council officially gave the planthe go-ahead at their meeting on 30November, and from 1 January thebending magnet beamline and MX ex-perimental station will be run jointlyby EMBL, ESRF and the Indian De-partment of Biotechnology when anexisting contract with the MRC ends.

The agreement guarantees the con-tinuation of this state-of-the-art Multi-wavelength Anomalous Diffraction(MAD) beamline, and will strengthenlinks with the Indian MX community.

BM14 approved

Photo:M

ariettaSchup

p

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

www.embl.org/alumni

i

The spirit of ChristmasWith Christmas just around the corner, wespoke to some EMBL alumni who helpbring festive cheer to the dinner table...

Angus KingThen: Postdoc, Intrumentation, 1997-1998Now: Cadenhead’s Whisky Shop, Odense.

After EMBL I went into biotech, but when mywife started the whisky shop and asked me if I wantedto join, I jumped at the chance. We have a franchiseon products from Cadenhead’s, the oldest independ-ent bottler in Scotland, and we’re the only retail outletfor them in Denmark. We specialize in niche productssuch as single cask and cask-strength whiskies. Themost rewarding part of the work is actually people-orientated. Being appreciated for our service and ad-vice is a great boost to moral.

Whether it’s biotech or any other sort of business,the basics of setting one up are the same; of course,you need to have some expertise. I’m the only Scottishperson selling Scottish whisky in Denmark, so mycredentials are OK!

Maj Britt HansenThen: Photographer in EMBL Heidelberg’s photolab, 2001-2006Now: Freelance photographer, mbhstudios.com and vinter, Ökol-ogisches Weingut Klaus Vorgrimmler, Freiburg

Winemaking runs on a yearly rhythm, which starts inJanuary with the cutting and tying of the vines for the newgrapes. Cultivating the soil is a constant job from March to No-vember. In May and June the vines flower, and harvest time –fun but very stressful – usually starts in October. Afterwardsour work moves more to the cellar until the following yearwhen the wine is bottled. We’re a small, family business; we doall our work by hand and use the natural resources around us –which is why you always have to stay one step ahead.

These two lifestyles work quite well together, as the busytimes for the photography usually fall outside the busy timeswith our wine. The time I spend in the vineyard gives me in-spiration and a new way to look at my creative work.

“

““

“

Rosanna MaccagnanoThen: Senior Administrative Officer, EMBLMR, 1998-2007Now: Research Training & Development Manager at Geo-Science, University of Edinburgh, and pub landlady

Returning to our Scottish roots after almost 10 yearsin Italy, Alex [Regan – formerly technical assistant atEMBL Monterotondo] and I moved into the StagheadInn, Fife, in February 2008. The pub was built in 1610 andis steeped in history, mainly involving our resident ghosts!I run the restaurant at weekends when I’m not at my job atEdinburgh University, and the rest of our family helpsout too.

The Staghead is the focal point of the village. The firstcustomers to walk in were Bob (affectionately known asone of the original grumpy old men) and Stewart, a brash,affable Glaswegian; they continue to make us feel at home.Another of our customers, JJ, flew over to Rome to playthe bagpipes in full Scottish dress for EMBL Montero-tondo’s Christian Fasci’s wedding. We hold karaoke andCeltic folk music events, and we have a very successfulpool team!

“

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EMBL&cetera • December 2009ii

www.embl.org/alumniGraphic:Petra

Riedinger

The spirit of Christmas continued

“

A big thank you to EMBL alumni andstaff, the Alumni Association board andleadership for raising €2,000 to run theJohn Kendrew Award in 2011. We are de-lighted with the worldwide response tothis campaign, which was launched in Oc-tober this year. Donations were receivedfrom ten European countries, Australia,the United States and Canada.

Based on the success of this campaign,we are confident that by 2012 it will bepossible to offer the John Kendrew Awardindefinitely. If 25% of EMBL alumni

(1,000 people) donate an average of €50,we could cover 75% of the €65,000 re-quired to fund this award in perpetuity.

We hope you will join us in our goal torecognise and reward more young scien-tists’ excellent research and science com-munication through your continuedsupport. All donors are listed on our“thank you” page. Please visit our websiteat www.embl.org/kendrewaward to seehow you can get involved.

Many thanks for your interest and help.– Giulio Superti-Furga

Every drop counts!

You can try Maj Britt’s, Angus’ andFreddy’s wines and spirits – or win athree-course meal at Rosie’s pub –at thenext EMBL staff/alumni reunion on 8March at EMBL Heidelberg’s new Ad-vanced Training Centre (ATC), to whichall EMBL and EMBO staff, alumni, Coun-cil and SAC members are invited.

The programme will include life sciencesand science and society talks, as well as anEMBL and alumni association update. So-cial highlights include an exhibition, a

tombola of personal and EMBL-relatedobjects donated by alumni, and a tour ofthe ATC including the Matti Sarastecourtyard.

A programme and an online registrationlink will be sent to staff and alumni earlynext year. Meanwhile visit the website atwww.embl.org/alumni/reunion for de-tails.

The event will be followed by the officialATC opening ceremony on 9 March.

Everyone welcome: March’s alumni reunion

When I’m not making the Frischknecht Schnapps – it’sa family tradition – I work on the motility of malaria para-sites. It’s interesting to note that malaria parasites are essen-tially inhibited by Schnapps, but you need a lot; at theconcentration that it’s bad for the parasite it kind of inhibitsthe drinker.

Making Schnapps is easy: you collect whatever fruits youhave – 2009 was great for cherries – put them in a barrel,and let them rot. Occasionally you open the barrel and takea big breath – totally gorgeous! You get drunk even withoutdrinking if the Schnapps is good. The Frischknecht one isabsolutely biological. There’s no chemistry in there; just lotsof biochemistry, though, from the good bugs. But watch outfor theDrosophila (a totally overrated model organism).Sometimes thousands fly out of a barrel when you open it.

“

Freddy FrischknechtThen: Predoc, Cell Biology and Biophysics, 1996-2000Now: Group leader, Heidelberg University MedicalSchool, and Schnapps maker

Freddy and friendMaik Lehmannhanding outSchnapps as posterprizes at a conference

Graphic:PetraRiedinger

EMBL&cetera • December 2009 7

Putting the pieces together...and bringing the east to the westThis year’s EMBL International PhD Sym-posium on 29 October, ‘Puzzles in Biology- putting the pieces together’, drew morethan 200 participants, some from as farafield as Armenia, Israel and even India.

The list of excellent speakers includedKim Nasmyth, Pierre Chambon, StefanHell, the inventor of Stimulated EmissionDepletion microscopy (STED), and AriHelenius, winner of the 2007 MarcelBenoist prize, the highest research award inSwitzerland. Topics covered how basic re-search can contribute to the understandingof human diseasesand how diseasescan give insightsinto basic biology;how collaborationsand past results canhelp solve complex

puzzles; and the promising new approachesand techniques set to transform the rate ofprogress in biology. The symposium alsoprovided a platform for the presentation ofthe PhD Symposium Writing Prize, whichthis year went to EMBL-EBI’s Diva Tom-mei for ‘The Dark Side of Stem Cells’.

“There was a big change in organisationthis year; there’s no more grant, and it’s adifficult time to find sponsors,” says predocPeter Blattmann. “Nevertheless, we at-tracted PhD students from around the

world, as well as many prestigious speakers,and it was as very rewarding experience.”

“Organising it was exciting not so muchfrom the scientific point of view but morefrom the personal,” adds Boryana Petrova.“Investing effort in a concept and then see-ing it unfold, with all its little problems andsuccesses, gives you such satisfaction.”

For the first time, the symposium waspreceded by an NIBB-EMBL PhD Mini-Symposium, jointly organised by theEMBL PhD and Visitors Programmes. Tenpredocs from Japan’s National Institute ofBasic Biology and Nagoya University pre-sented their work with talks on genome dy-namics, plant organ development and germcell biology. “Our predocs did very well ashosts for the day, and really made the visi-tors feel at home,” said Helke Hillebrand,Dean of Graduate Studies.

A long night for HamburgWhen EMBL Hamburg scientists stay upall night, you can usually find them eitherslaving away at the beamlines or hitting thebars on the Reeperbahn.

On 7 November, though, they mucked into do the graveyard shift in the name ofoutreach and education, when they tookpart in the city’s third Nacht des Wissens(Night of Sciences).

The twelve-hour event saw all Hamburg’smajor research organisations and universi-ties open their doors to the public, with aspecial shuttle service ferrying the bayingcrowds from place to place. The occasioncoincided with campus partner DESY’s50th anniversary, so their special eventsmeant that the site – and EMBL Hamburg’sstand – welcomed no fewer than 13,000visitors in the space of one evening.

The EMBL team, who set up camp at the

site of their new PETRA beamlines, pre-sented several technological developmentsincluding a live linkup to the MARVINsample changing robot, which visitorscould steer remotely, and a BioSAXS sam-ple changer which was programmed topour colourful dyes.

“It was exhausting,” says Rosemary Wil-son, EMBL Hamburg’s Scientific TrainingOfficer. “People were flocking to the standto have a go at our crystallisation experi-ments and to play the interactive games tolearn more about DNA and amino acids.There were entire families with childrenthere right up until the finish, which waslong past midnight, enjoying our kids’ ac-tivities like making DNA helices fromgummy bears. We sacrificed about 15kgof bears for that, and everyone whohelped out said that they had lots of fun.”

On 16 November Prof Annette Schavan,Germany’s Federal Minister for Educationand Research, helped push PETRA III’s ‘on’button to inaugurate the world’s most ad-vanced synchrotron radiation source.

For the past two-and-a-half years, EMBLHamburg’s campus partner the GermanSynchrotron Research Centre (DESY) hasbeen upgrading its beamline facilities toprovide modern, world-leading services.Out of PETRA III’s 14 beamlines, three arebeing designed and built by EMBL. Now,the completion and launch of the PETRA IIIring promises to make DESY and EMBLglobal competitors in structural biology.

Minister Schavan joined Prof JürgenMlynek, President of the Helmholtz Associ-ation, Dr Herlind Gundelach, Hamburg’sScience Senator, and DESY Director ProfHelmut Dosch to start the 1,150 magnetsrunning. “The collaboration between physi-cists, biologists and infection researchersoffer great opportunities for medical appli-cations,” she said.

Thomas Schneider and Stefan Fiedler’steams at EMBL Hamburg are constructingbeamlines for small angle X-ray scatteringon solutions and X-ray crystallography oncrystals of biological macromolecules,which will operate at a new integrated facil-ity for structural biology (www.embl-ham-burg.de/services/petra). “After a period ofinternal testing we look forward to welcom-ing the first users in the second half of2010,” says Thomas.

Petra III inaugurated

The Petra III hall was lit up forthe occasion

Diva receives thewriting prize; left, theNIBB visitors withEMBL predocs

Photo: Christine Panagiotidis

EMBL&cetera • December 20098

A record number of 270 participants heardabout the contribution plant science canmake to the global challenge of food secu-rity in a growing world population at theEMBO/EMBL Science & Society conferenceon 6-7 November at EMBL.

The two-day event, ‘Food, Sustainabilityand Plant Science: A Global Challenge’looked at food shortage, which – next to cli-mate change – is the greatest challenge fac-

ing the world. To stay on top of the world-wide food supply for nine billion people in2050, the production of staple crops has toincrease by at least 50 per cent. Alreadytoday, more than one billion people in theworld are hungry. The green revolution,which started in the fifties, tripled the worldfood production, but resulted in a depend-ence on very few strains of major foodcrops. What’s worse, 40 percent of the arableland has become seriously degraded and in-fertile and biodiversity has sharply declined.

According to Sir David Baulcombe, Uni-versity of Cambridge, the existing agricul-tural production system is operating close tofull capacity. The threatened worldwidefood supply calls for innovative technologiesto breed new strains of robust and efficientplants: crops resistant to flooding, draught,

salination and pests as well as high yieldingcrops enriched with micronutrients and vi-tamins. Pamela Ronald of the University ofCalifornia, Davis, said: “There are notenough breeders in general. It’s almost likewhere we were ten years ago with bioinfor-matics.” Plant breeders and researchers de-plore the lack of young scientists interestedin these topics.

European public and policy makers largelyignore the impending crisis. As a conse-quence, public funding and support forplant and agricultural research are low andplant breeding is left to big industry thatholds a quasi monopoly and most of the ex-clusive commercial rights. Sir DavidBaulcombe called for scientists to becomepolitical and alert policy makers and thepublic to the crisis. – G. Wallon & Y. Kaul

Toby, what’s all this about?It’s an ongoing debate about the issue ofoversimplification in biology. You have to bereductionist in science in order to be able todevise experiments. You need to fix manyaspects of a system and then you perturbjust one thing and see what happens. Later,you might forget that you’ve fixed so muchthat you’re not invoking so many of thethings that could happen – that could playroles in overall regulation – because you’reonly looking at one aspect.Is this a new idea?Physicist Niels Bohr considered truth andclarity to be complementary. The term co-operativity – multiple binding interactionsthat influence each other positively or nega-tively – is quite old. Classical biochemistsworking on enzymes have known about itfor a long time. You can’t have biologicalcomplexity without cooperativity, and youcannot have robustness without a compli-cated system. The only way to be robust iswith complicated decision-making, notbased on a single parameter.What consequences does this have?Firstly, that kinases cannot cascade. If youstart seeing cell regulation as highly net-

worked, highly cooperative and also highlyredundant, then it’s not hard to see thatthere’s a need in certain parts of medicinefor multi-drug therapy. Cancer cells removecooperativity to simplify key pathways: Theyactually become less robust than healthycells. With one drug you may kill most can-cer cells; but in others, there’ll always be mu-tations in there that can circumvent it anduse another way to achieve the same thing.In multi-drug therapy, you try to hit every-thing that a cancer cell regards as important.If you knew enough about a cancer cell –not just that it gets a growth factor signal,but about its pathways that suppress apopto-sis, and about its metastasis – and you hitthe right pathways for this cancer, then youhave a chance of knocking out the whole cellpopulation. The corollary is that the healthycells are more robust and may survive thetherapy much better than the cancer cells.So what can be done about it?Currently, cell system models are too simple.If wet lab people don’t tell the modellers thatsystems are cooperative, of course they won’tmodel them that way. But people on thebench say ‘I’ve just found that a binds to b,and that’s all I need to know. I don’t need to

knowthat an-other tenmolecules arebinding to modulate that.’ In fact you do, butthey rather hope the system is simpler, be-cause then they’ve understood it.

There’s a story I like to tell: it’s the inaugu-ral lecture for the first ever cellular systemsbiology course. The eminent professor kicksthings off with the old joke, “Bacteria arejust a bag of enzymes!” The students are de-lighted: “Hey, I know how to model that.”And so it has been ever since, the larger eu-karyotic cells then simply being modelled asa bigger bag with some pockets in it.How will you be addressing this issue?There’s a standard that defines how we putinteraction data into the computer, and thishas nothing about cooperativity in it, so wecan’t capture at the very first step that some-one has found cooperativity. One of thethings I’m hoping to do next year is to startworking on that. I’ve already been talking tostandards people at the EBI about it.

You can read Toby’s article at

How can we feed the world? Scientists, journalists and politicians discussthe future of sustainable agriculture

interview

A farmerfrom theIndian stateofMaharashtrain a fieldplanted withgeneticallymodified BTcotton

EMBL Heidelberg team leader Toby Gibson goes public with a crusadeagainst the consequences of overly simplistic perspectives following thepublication of an opinion piece in Trends in Biochemical Sciences (TiBS)

Turn off those kinase cascades!

Right: “There are thousands of proteins which make hundreds of interactions; theremay also be hundreds of proteins which make thousands of interactions”.

(Figure prepared with the STRING server (http://string.embl.de))

www.cell.com/trends/biochemical-sciences/fulltext/S0968-0004%2809%2900142-X

9

Gender-bending mice

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

Flu fighterA new EMBL spin-out company, SaviraPharmaceuticals (www.savira.at), will focuson the development of drugs for the treat-ment of influenza.

Co-founded in September by EMBL andthe Vienna-based biotech companyonepharm Research and DevelopmentGmbH, Savira will build on the break-through results from Stephen Cusack´s labwhere they identified the molecular archi-tecture of the cap-binding domain in thePB2 in the PA subunit of the influenza viralpolymerase.

These findings, in which Darren Hart’sgroup at EMBL Grenoble and EMBL Hei-delberg’s Chemical Biology Core Facilitywere also involved, open new avenues forthe structure-based development of anti-in-fluenza drugs, targeting the viral polymeraseto selectively stop the reproductive cycle.Savira’s development pipeline of selective in-hibitors will be fuelled from three differentmedicinal chemistry programmes and willdraw on the know-how and intellectualproperty of the founders. “We believe thatSavira is the perfect vehicle to translate ourbasic research results into urgently neededdrug candidates to combat both seasonaland pandemic influenza,” says Martin Ra-ditsch, Deputy Managing Director of EM-BLEM, EMBL’s technology transfercompany.

Savira, which is based in Vienna, received€1m support from the Austria Wirtschafts-service (AWS) and was awarded third placeby the City of Vienna Future Award (WienerZukunftspreis 2009) in the category ‘New-comers and Start-ups’.

When biology meets maths

EMBL researchers have uncovered thegene responsible for keeping females fe-male in a study published on 11 Decemberin Cell.

In humans and most other mammals, anindividual’s sex is determined by its sexchromosomes: females have two X chro-mosomes, and males have an X and a Y.Scientists had long assumed that the fe-male pathway – the development ofovaries and all the other female traits –was the default: if an embryo had a genecalled Sry, which is located on the Y chro-mosome, it would develop into a male; ifnot, then the result would be a female.

A gene called Foxl2, which is located ona non-sex chromosome and thereforepresent in both sexes, was known to playan important role in the female pathway,but its precise function remained elusive.When Mathias Treier’s group turned offthis gene in the ovaries of adult femalemice, they found that cells in the ovariesturned into cells typically found in testes.

“We were surprised,” says Mathias, who

collaborated with colleagues from theMRC’s National Institute for Medical Re-search (NIMR), in Mill Hill, UK, for thestudy. “We expected the mice to stop pro-ducing oocytes, but what happened wasmuch more dramatic: somatic cells whichsupport the developing egg took on thecharacteristics of cells which usually sup-port developing sperm, and female hor-mone-producing cells switched to themale type.” This challenges the long-heldassumption that the development of fe-male traits is a default pathway, showingthat the male pathway needs to be activelysuppressed, and also grants a valuable in-sight into how sex determination evolved.

These findings will have wide-rangingimplications for reproductive medicineand may help to treat sex differentiationdisorders in children or understand themasculinising effects of menopause onsome women. The study is discussed byMathias in a Cell ‘PaperFlicks’ video onYouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oL7RKUNchY.

obituaryWe regretfully inform the EMBL commu-nity that our colleague, Göran Wikell, diedon 21 November in Heidelberg.

Göran came to EMBL in 2001, first as partof the Swedish Audit Group for EMBL,EMBC and EMBO and then, as of 2004, asan external Auditor for EU Grants. Between1969 and 2005 he held various senior posi-tions at the Swedish National Audit Office.

Göran was a highly regarded professionalwith a strong sense of duty and commit-ment. He quickly grasped the spirit ofEMBL and embodied it in his work and ac-tions, and we had the privilege to knowGöran as a kind and helpful colleague witha good sense of humour. He will be greatlymissed.

Research from Jan Ellenberg’s group atEMBL Heidelberg has revealed that fractals– fragmented shapes made up of reduced-size copies of the whole – could be usefulmathematical tools to describe the behav-iour of molecules in the nucleus.

The nucleus of eukaryotes is enriched inDNA, proteins and RNA, and is thusthought to be a crowded area. In vitro, it hasbeen shown that molecular crowdingstrongly affects protein dynamics butwhether this is also relevant in vivo remainsunclear. In a study published on 16 Decem-ber in the EMBO Journal, postdocsSébastien Huet and Aurélien Bancaud fol-lowed the movement of fluorescent mole-cules in living cells, and saw that theymoved as if having to navigate obstacles.Comparing the pattern of movement of dif-ferent-sized molecules, they found that largemolecules moved according tothe same rules as small ones.

This result suggested thatthese molecules were ‘seeing’the same crowded environ-ment, regardless of scale; thattheir environment, in fact, wasfractal. “It’s like a system ofbranched channels resemblinga coastline,” says Jan, who’s

head of the Cell Biology and BiophysicsUnit.

The team then watched how different pro-teins moved and bound to euchromatin andheterochromatin. They found that euchro-matin shows a high fractal dimension,which means it exposes a large, rough sur-face to the molecules. In contrast, hete-rochromatin’s low fractal dimension makesit smoother and flatter, with a smaller ex-posed surface.

“This could help to explain how the celltweaks the behaviour of the proteins thatcontrol DNA,” says Sébastien. “The nucleusmight be able to switch the way proteinslook for targets on chromatin simply by al-tering the fractal structure of chromatin.”

Left: A cell displays chromatin (green) and amolecule used for tracking (red). Right: A closer

look at the fractal architecture of chromatin

EMBL&cetera • December 200910

Open doors atthe MMPU

Building bridges: the Postdoc Retreatetreat (n): 1. the forced or strategicwithdrawal of an armed force before an

enemy; 2. an asylum for the insane; 3. pe-riod of retirement for religious exercises, me-diation or study’. For the 84 EMBL postdocswho made the journey to Lago Maggiore on4-6 November, their annual getaway was acombination of at least two of these three.

Held at the Hotel de Palma in Stresa, Italy– the midpoint between Heidelberg, Mon-terotondo and Grenoble – this year’s retreatenjoyed a rise in attendance, especially fromthe outstations. As well as being a chance forpostdocs to get away from it, hear all abouteach others’ work and network with theirpeers, the event boasted distinguished andinspiring speakers in the shape of LewisWolpert, Miroslav Radman and EMBLalumnus Carlo Petosa. While Lewis sparkeda very philosophical discussion with his talkon causal beliefs, Miroslav challenged theaudience with his creative, high-risk re-search, and Carlo calmed frayed postdocnerves with a comforting story of how aNa-ture paper really gets written.

The location certainly lent itself to relax-ation and reflection. When they weren’tbusy in the scientific sessions, the postdocsenjoyed several dips in the hotel’s panoramicjacuzzi, as well as a boat trip to neighbour-ing islands. “It presented all the eerie charmof a deserted tourist trap off-season, and waseven devoid of locals,” comments RemcoLoos. “It’s not every day your conferenceposter gets reflected in a set of gold-framedbaroque mirrors,” adds Aidan Budd.

“The overwhelming success of this year’sretreat is thanks to everyone lending a handto make sure everything went smoothly,”says SebastianGlatt, who led theorganising com-mittee. “I’d alsolike to thankEICAT for cover-ing the rise in at-tendance so thatwe didn’t have tobe limited to 60people.”

‘R

Top: invited speakers Miroslav Radman, LouisWolpert and Carlo Petosa; above, the PostdocAssociation Committee; beautiful LagoMaggiore. Below: the 84 attendees

Photos:Jan

Medenb

ach

“It’s an opportunity to hear from theother groups and see how we mightcollaborate in the future. It’s also niceto be in the new ATC!” – Marcus Mall,MMPU group leader. Recently

became the first ever recipient of a HeisenbergProfessorship at Heidelberg’s Medical Faculty

“The open day has provided anopportunity for students in theMMPU groups to present theirdata in a relaxed atmosphere,despite the very tight schedule!” –

Heiko Runz, MMPU group leader, HeidelbergUniversity

The MMPU Research Day: What did you think?

“I’m used to always talking toclinicians, so an audience of basicresearchers is a real change. TheMMPU bridges the gap betweenthe two very effectively.” – Guest

speaker Stefan Pfister, DKFZ

“It’s a great way for me to getsome insights into the work of theMMPU, as I’m planning to joinHeiko’s group downtown as apostdoc.” – Carolina Tangemo,

EMBL PhD student, Pepperkok team

ELLS in Genoa

Researchers from the Medical Faculty of theUniversity of Heidelberg got together withEMBL scientists on 27 November for the 5thMolecular Medicine Partnership Unit(MMPU) Research Day.

Predocs, postdocs and physicians from thefive MMPU groups – which are headed byone group leader from EMBL together withone from the Medical Faculty – presentedtheir recent findings on understanding RNAquality control by NMD, paediatric brain tu-mours, lung diseases, colon tumours andregulators in cholesterol uptake.

The partnership, which was set up in 2002by EMBL’s Matthias Hentze and AndreasKulozik from the Angelika-Lautenschläger

Hospital for Children and Adolescents atHeidelberg University, aims to strengthenthe link between molecular research andmedicine by combining studies of the basisof common human diseases with applica-tions in diagnosis and therapy.

“The MMPU Research Day, held twice ayear, is becoming a conference not only forMMPU members but also for the medicaland scientific community in Heidelberg,”says Britta Schläger, who supports the man-agement of the MMPU. “It’s a platform for abroad scientific audience to learn about thelatest translational projects of the groupsand to get in contact with EMBL scientists,as well as with Medical Faculty clinicians.”

In October European Learning Labora-tory for the Life Sciences (ELLS) offi-cers Rossana De Lorenzi and newrecruit Tommaso Nastasi from EMBLMonterondo took part in one of Italy’sbiggest scientific outreach events,Genoa’s Festival della Scienza.

In the hallowed surroundings of thechurch of Sant’Agostino, Rossana(below left) and Tommaso used anewly-developed activity, ‘Naturallyunbiased’, to introduce some of the200,000 festival-goers to the world ofmicrobes. Participants were helped toobserve microbes in their own salivaand from yoghurt, after which theylearnt about how sequencing is pro-ducing an ever-growing bulk of dataand allowing scientists to discover newmicroorganisms and functions.

Photos:ChristinePanagiotidis

EMBL&cetera • December 2009 11

� Registration is open for the followingEBI hands-on bioinformatics train-ing courses to help you get to gripswith your data: ‘Programmatic accessto biological databases (Perl)’ on 22-26 February (registration closes 21January); ‘Plant bioinformatics’ on29-31 March (closes 26 February);and the EMBO Practical Course, ‘Insilico systems biology: network re-construction, analysis and network-based modelling’, on 10-13 April(closes 26 February). For details seewww.ebi.ac.uk/training/handson.

� EMBO would like to invite scientiststo help shape the programme of TheEMBOMeeting 2011 in Vienna (10-13 September) by contributing to theworkshop sessions. Proposals are in-vited from scientists who have ideason new perspectives on any life sci-ence topic of interest to broad audi-ences. Single workshops, but also aseries of related workshops held overconsecutive days may be proposed.search. For more details seehttp://2011.the-embo-meeting.org.

� 15 international journalists visitedEMBL as part of a conference,'Biotechnology and its impact on so-ciety', organised by the InternationalJournalist Programme Initiative.After an introduction by Head of In-ternational Relations and Communi-cations Silke Schumacher, groupleader Francesca Peri presented herresearch, and then the visitors touredlab facilities and were impressed bythe architecture of the ATC.

� The new ATC teaching lab was usedfor the first time when EMBL’s Euro-pean Learning Laboratory for the LifeSciences (ELLS) invited 40 studentsfrom Heidelberg-area schools to aniNEXT event on 5-6 November. TheInteractive Network for ExperimentalTraining (iNEXT) aims to developmore ‘inquiry-based’ materials andmethods for science teaching. “It’s im-portant to ensure that students take ananalytical approach and learn to ask

questions and formulate hypotheseswhen they’re studying science,” ex-plains Julia Willingale-Theune, Headof ELLS. “It’s not a subject that shouldbe taught dryly, straight from a text-book.” iNEXT is funded by theRobert-Bosch-Stiftung.

� A delegation of visitors from Jiangsuprovince in China visited EMBLHeidelberg on 6 November as part ofa tour of the institutes and biotechspots in the city. The visitors, who

came from governmental depart-ments, universities and industry,learnt about the way EMBL worksfrom Head of International Relationsand Communications Silke Schu-macher.

� EMBL Grenoble has recently beenhost to Prof. Iqbal Chaudhury, headof the foremost academic researchinstitution in Pakistan, the ICCBS atthe University of Karachi. A guest ofthe French government, Prof Chaud-hury is on a mission through Franceto set up collaborations and interac-tions. Group leaders Imre Berger andChristiane Schaffitzel are hosting twograduates from his institute, NadjaAshraf and Humeera Waheed, whoreceived Fellowships of Excellence bythe French Embassy in Pakistan towork at EMBL.

� Upcoming courses in the GeneralTraining and Development Pro-gramme include:

In addition, the new term of in-house language courses will start inlate January. See http://intranet.embl.de/personnel/training_devel-opment/index.html for details.

newsinbrief

Course Date / site

Minute taking withConfidence

8 Jan (EBI)

Excel Beginners 28 & 29 Jan (HD)

121 AdvancedPresentation Skills

28 & 29 Jan (EBI)

Interviewing Skills 1 Feb (EBI)

Presentation Skills 2 & 3 Feb (EBI)

fromtheStaffAssociation

� Saturday, 30 January: Burns Night. Thelongest-running annual event at EMBLHeidelberg! The Scottish party of the yearwith whisky, bagpipes, haggis and danc-ing. Tickets will be on sale in December.

� Monday, 8 March: Bernd-Uwe Jahn’sOfficial Farewell and ATC openingparty for all staff. Staff from all EMBLsites are invited to say goodbye to Bernd-Uwe Jahn, our retiring Administrative Di-rector, and join in to celebrate the openingof the ATC. The evening event will includedinner and live music, as well as tours of theconference facilities.

� Keep up-to-date with events atwww.embl-heidelberg.de/~staff (site for EMBL pen-sioners:www.embl-heidelberg.de/~staff/pensioners).

– Catherine Floyd

Give somethingback to the EIPP!How would you like to do your bit for theEMBL International PhD Programme(EIPP) – and get your next trip back homefor free?

Dean of Graduate Studies Helke Hille-brand would like to encourage students totake part in the new EMBL PhD Ambassa-dors programme, which reimburses up to€300 travel and materials expenses to thosewho give a talk about the EIPP at an EMBLmember state university.

Ludovic Brun, a third-year predoc in theNédélec group, was the first such student totake part when he went on 26 October tothe Université Paris 7/11, where he did hismasters degree in physics. He gave a ten-minute presentation about EMBL, the PhDprogramme and Heidelberg. “It was an audi-ence of physics students, so moving intomolecular biology was something that manyof them hadn’t thought about, or thoughtpossible,” he says.

Next up are France Audrey Peltier andAino Inkeri Järvelin, who’ll be giving similartalks at their former universities in Paris andTampere, where they studied genetics andbiotechnology respectively. Helke would liketo encourage more volunteers to come for-ward. “It’s a great way of giving somethingback to our member states and enhancingthe visibility of predoc opportunities atEMBL,” she says.

If you’d like to become a PhD Ambassador,please contact helke.hillebrand@embl.de.

EMBL&cetera issue 54, December 2009.Published by EMBL’s Office of Informationand Public Affairs, Meyerhofstrasse 1, D-69117 Heidelberg. e-mail: info@embl.de.Available online: www.embl.org/newsletter.Editor: Vienna Leigh. Editorial support:Lena Raditsch, Silke Schumacher.Contributors: Louisa Wright, MehrnooshRayner, Katrina Pavelin, Sonia Furtado.Photographic support: EMBL Photolab.Graphic support: Petra Riedinger.Front cover photo: Christine Panagiotidis.Printed by ColorDruck, Leimen.

Martin Beckwill join EMBL Heidelberg’s Structural and Com-putational Biology Unit as group leader in January. Originallyfrom Leipzig, Martin studied biochemistry at the Martin LutherUniversity in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, before going on tostudy for his PhD in life sciences from the Max Planck Institutefor Biochemistry in Martinsried. Since 2006 he has been a post-doc at ETH in Zurich, and his group at EMBL will study macro-molecular assemblies using electron microscopy and massspectrometry.

Carsten Sachse will also join the Structural and ComputationalBiology Unit as group leader in electron microscopy at the be-ginning of next year. Currently a postdoc at the MRC’s Labo-ratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, Carsten gainedhis PhD in molecular biology from the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität in Jena, Germany and Brandeis University inWaltham, USA. At EMBL, his group will study the degradativepathway of pathological aggregates through autophagy usingsingle-particle cryo-EM.

events@EMBL people@EMBL14-15 January EMBL HeidelbergMeeting of the Nordic EMBLPartnership for Molecular MedicineAll faculty welcome

19-22 January EMBL HeidelbergCourse: Exploring Modular ProteinArchitecture

25-29 January EMBL-EBICourse: Small Molecule BioactivityResources at the EBI

27 January EMBL HeidelbergCourse: Preparing for the AcademicJob Market

30 January EMBL HeidelbergBurns Night

7-11 February EMBL HeidelbergEMBO Practical Course: Genomicapproaches to evolution anddevelopment

10-11 February EMBL MonterotondoHeads of Units/Senior Scientists Mtg

22-26 February EMBL-EBICourse: Programmatic Access ToBiological Databases (Perl)

1-3 March EMBL-EBIConference: Therapeutic Applicationsof Computational Biology andChemistry: TACBAC 2010

3-5 March EMBL HeidelbergEMBOWorkshop: VisualizingBiological Data (VizBi)

8 March EMBL HeidelbergBernd-Uwe Jahn’s Official Farewelland ATC staff opening party

8 March EMBL HeidelbergStaff/alumni reunion

8-10 March EMBL-EBIELLS LearningLAB: EnhancingBiology Teaching Using BiologicalDatabases

8-14 March EMBL HeidelbergCourse: Advanced Microscopy

9 March EMBL HeidelbergATC Official Opening Ceremony

For more details about these eventsand more, visit www.embl.org/events

As the next EMBO Director from 1 January 2010, ProfessorMaria Leptinwill establish a research group in the Directors’ Re-search Unit at EMBL Heidelberg. Her focus will be on complexcell shapes and the genetic pathways that determine them. Mariawill be only the fifth director in EMBO’s forty-five year history,and will take over from Hermann Bujard who has been Directorsince 2007. “I am thrilled to continue the initiatives begun by pre-vious directors that promote the molecular life sciences in Eu-rope and worldwide,” says Maria.

Burn bright, my light

Melanie Rauscher will take over as EMBL Heidelberg’sGenome Biology Unit secretary from Sylvia Schattschneiderwhen she moves over to Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit inthe new year. Originally from Frankenthal, Melanie worked atthe Medical Research Center in Mannheim and then as a med-ical and administrative assistant for the US Army Hospital inRohrbach before coming to EMBL. “It’s a very open and inter-national environment here, just as I imagined it would be!” shesays, having already spent three months shadowing Sylvia.

Children from EMBL Heidelberg’sKinderhaus, their parents and teacherslit up the campus with a traditional St.Martin’s Day lantern parade on 10November. Carrying their own home-made lanterns, the children werecommemorating in the traditionalGerman way the compassion St. Martinshowed towards a poor man by dividingup his coat into two pieces.

Photo:C

hristinePanagiotid

is