The Vastenhouwies gathered with other fish users on Friday, November 4th, 2022, for the 2nd edition of Lausanne Fish User Meeting. This year, the event took place at EPFL and reunited fish users from 9 research groups across Lausanne: UNIL-Dorigny campus, UNIL-Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois (CHUV) site, Nestlé Institute of Health Science (NIHS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Like last year, the meeting was an opportunity to hear about the latest research using zebrafish and killifish as a model, and be exposed to the wide variety of techniques and applications used by the different research groups in Lausanne.
This year's keynote speaker was Nathalie Jurisch-Yaksi, an alumna of UNIL and now a group leader at the Department of Clinical and Molecular Medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and an Associate Professor at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trodheim, Norway. Prof. Jurisch-Yaksi presented her fascinating research on the role of cilia in brain development and the impact of ciliary motility function on cerebral spinal flow.
Trainees from nine fish groups then presented their research projects, which covered a wide variety of topics to reflect the versatility of using fish as a model organism. Research themes included:
gene regulation, aging, spinal cord injury and regeneration, metabolism, inter-organelle communication, radiotherapy, segmentation timing, and human syndromic diseases.
Our very own Shivali Dongre gave a talk on "Transcription factor organization in the early zebrafish embryo". The meeting ended with an apéro to encourage networking and promoting discussions among the fish users.
Many thanks to the sponsors: bionomous, Planktovie, Viventis Microscopy, Techniplast, and the universities and Nestlé Health Science. Thanks also to Nadine and Guillaume Valentin (Fish facility manager of EPFL) for the organization and bringing all of us together!
