More than 2,300 scientists, including six Nobel Prize winners, are attending the 20th Congress of Genetics - ICG 2008 - in Berlin from 12 to 17 July. Comments from Karin Hollricher.
(July 17th 2008) This week, more than 2,300 people are expected to trail into the huge International Congress Centre that is reminiscent of a damaged aircraft carrier. Over 800 scientists are from Germany alone. However, the organisers had optimistically anticipated more - especially from North America. Is their absence indicative of the high dollar-euro exchange rate?
54 symposia, 9 plenary lectures, a keynote symposium, workshops, posters and satellite meetings covering all fields of genetics are scheduled during the six-day conference. Breakthroughs or crazy new results are not necessarily on the agenda ... but you never know. As Oliver Smithies, one of the Nobel laureates, put it, "You can never tell what's going to happen at an international congress. But every now and then, there's a person who goes a little further than the rest. They are the 'jumpers'. And I hope to see a few jumps at this conference."
Well, we don't know whether he was able to identify any 'jumpers'. I didn't! Anyway, it's a fact that scientists do not reveal their most recent, as yet unpublished results, to the audience, wary that journalists are listening too. If journalists pick up an outstanding new story, they will report it - irrespective of whether science journals like
Nature or
Science are annoyed if results, already on their way to publication, are propelled into the public domain before the papers have been printed.
Large congresses offer the exceptional chance to listen to inspiring overview talks like those from Elizabeth Blackburn (telomere specialist), Eric Lander (specialist for 'big science' projects) or Oliver Smithies. Together with Christiane Nuesslein-Volhard and Mario Capecchi he guided us through the history of genetics and the current genetics research.
Happily, Smithies refrained from showing blots and sequences. Instead, he guided his audience on a journey through 60 years of his scientific life with the help of photos and records from his laboratory notebooks. It was upon these pages that some of the most important advances in molecular biology were first recorded, such as gel electrophoresis and knock out mice. Smithies himself made these important advances!
Smithies, now 72 years old, is still filling his laboratory books with new experiments and ideas - one of the most recent being a hypothesis about the biology of the liver. He sent his thoughts to
Nature for publication but the journal rejected his letter. "
Nature said it doesn't publish hypotheses, it published results", Smithies remarked with a whimsical grin, “I'm working on it”. What a great, entertaining talk.
Large congresses give you the chance to expand your horizons and explore new shores. The ICG covers the entire field of basic and applied genetics, ranging from newest developments in genome research to stem cell research, applied biotechnology, evo-devo, agriculture, history of genetics and synthetic biology.
Given the extremely miscellaneous assortment of presentations, I was spoilt for choice. I listened to stem-cell biologist Hans Schöler talking about how he reprogrammed unipotent murine germline stem cells into pluripotent ES-like cells by employing culture conditions without any genetic manipulation - of course, he didn't betray the conditions. Perhaps that was a jump. Günther Theissen (University of Jena, Germany) revealed that he has designed a model for the development of the orchids' lips and I heard Karen Steel talking about the identification of a bunch of genes that play a significant role in deafness. It was also interesting to listen to A. Griffiths (University of British Columbia, Canada) explain why learning genetics is so difficult for students. There were posters highlighting topics galore, for example, about a promising new model for the research into aging, a fish named
Nothobranchius Furzeri! Or a poster from Bengt Bengtssson (University of Lund, Sweden), who prepared a film on the 1948 8th Congress of Genetics in Sweden with original footage showing prominent and sadly forgotten geneticists debating, conversing and exchanging pleasantries - all headed by a smiling H.J. Muller. One can borrow a copy of the film.
In particular, I enjoyed a new interview format, the aptly named Tea Talks, with a handful each of journalists and scientists being invited for tea, delicious scones and talks in a hotel bar with splendid views over the rooftops of Berlin.
Altogether the ICG presented a very attractive programme. What I pity that I had to leave on Tuesday. The only thing that I missed was the catering. Free coffee and two biscuits twice a day is definitely not enough to survive a hard and long (!!) conference day in Berlin.
