C4a: 2007, September 22-26, 2007, EMBO conference: Ubiquitin and Ubiqutin-like Modifiers in Cellular Regulation, Riva Del Garda, Italy (»Add to Infobox)

Haguenauer-Tsapis Rosine

Rosine Haguenauer-Tsapis's Group

Invited speakers included: Aaron Ciechanover, Alexander Varshavsky, Maria Masucci, Stefan Jentsch, Ronald T. Hay, Thomas Sommer, Dieter H. Wolf, Paolo DiFiore, Mark Hochstrasser, Randy Hampton, Frauke Melchior, Chris Lima, Bill Tansey, Alan d’Andrea, James Chen, Jesper Svejstrup, Yoshinori Ohsumi, Titia Sixma, Ivan Dikic, Daniel Finley, Scott Emr The first EMBO conference on “ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like modifiers in cellular regulation” that will alternate with the FASEB summer research conference on “ubiquitin and cellular regulation” was a great success, from the point of view of participants, whether group leaders, or students/post-docs. The splendid hotel, carefully chosen by the organizers, was very nice, in the beautiful location of the small ancient city of Riva Del Garda, and everybody could enjoy city and lake during the free afternoon. The high level of most - if not all - conferences was striking. Fortunately, a meeting in Europe will help students and post-docs, that do not have necessarily the possibility to go to USA to attend high level conferences in this field, and we had the chance to also meet many colleagues coming from USA, Japan... which helped avoiding a pure European meeting. I had the feeling that this field is still able to provide us many excitements, with new data in most areas, including on overstudied subjects. One example was provided by several talks on proteasomes. Although already studied genetically, biochemically, purified, cristallized for so many years, studies on the yeast proteasome can still surprise us, with several new data, including identification in the proteasome base, of the main receptor for ubiquitylated proteins, by a model collaborative work between three labs on either side of the Atlantic Ocean… Mamalian proteasome was not standing back, with discoveries of new forms of specialized proteasome. We could also enjoy discoveries of new actors in the ubiquitin/ubiquitin-like field, and new aspects of known functions or even new functions of the modifications in processes ranging from transcription, trafficking, signaling, ribosome biogenesis, regulation of carbohydrate metabolism... Other surprises in the present period includes the crosstalk between functions of ubiquitylation and sumoylation, illustrated for instance by the identification of ubiquitin E3 ligases involved in ubiquitylation of sumoylated proteins. Technology did not lay behind, and we could feel how much this field benefits from improvements/explosion in proteomic approaches, and enthusiasm is still there for bioinformatical discovery of ubiquitin- and ubiquitin-like binding domains. For this first EMBO meeting series, the vast majority of the conference talks were necessarily given by established members in the field, and may be that future meetings will benefit from the possibility of including more presentations by young investigators. Almost 100 subjects were selected for poster presentation, all presented for only one session. Many posters (and even many conferences) included unpublished work. The limited number of participants and the sufficient length of time for these presentations allowed an atmosphere of intense and friendly discussions. The nice weather allowed putting a number of the posters outside, which even improved the possibility of exchanges. More generally, there was enough time for informal discussions, which clearly helped overall exchanges, including establishment of new collaborations. Overall, we will all remember this great stimulating meeting!

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Haguenauer-Tsapis Rosine (Principal Investigator / Rosine Haguenauer-Tsapis's Group)