Picturesfrom BurnsNight2

EMBLetcetera

The Newsletter of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory

Issue 55 • February 2010 • www.embl.org/newsletter

Fay’s fabulous findings

The new year began with a meeting with the new scientists of theNordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine in Heidelberg.

Established in 2007, the partnership includes the universities of Oslo, Umeå and Helsinki, whichhave established ‘nodes’ at the Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway, the Laboratory for Molecu-lar Infection Medicine Sweden and the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland. They combinecomplementary strengths and collaborate with EMBL to tackle problems in biomedicine.While the new scientists involved were presenting their research to each other, the administratorsfrom each node met to discuss joint communications activities to promote the partnership and todiscuss the first joint recruitment of group leaders which was planned for the following week inCopenhagen. More on page 2.

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5ChEMBLdb– open forbusiness4

EMBO Fellowspension plantakes off

New kit toboost EMopportunities3

Looking north to explore biomedicine

PhD student finishes up with a flourish More on page 5

Strengthening linkswith industry21 January saw the members of theEMBL ATC Corporate Partnershipcome together for their first officialevent and the beginning of the nextphase of the programme. Representa-tives from all fifteen companies gath-ered in the Advanced Training Centre

for aperitifs, a series ofscientific presenta-

tions and dinner.

EMBL&cetera • February 20102

Looking north to explore biomedicineThe new year began with a meeting withthe new scientists of the Nordic EMBLPartnership for Molecular Medicine inHeidelberg on 14-15 January.

Established in 2007, the partnership in-cludes the universities of Oslo, Umeå andHelsinki, all of which have established‘nodes’ at the Centre for Molecular Medi-cine Norway (NCMM), the Laboratory forMolecular Infection Medicine Sweden(MIMS) and the Institute for MolecularMedicine Finland (FIMM). They combinecomplementary strengths and collaborateclosely with EMBL to tackle challengingproblems in biomedicine.

Since the launch of the partnership, thenodes have been able to hire 25 group

leaders, and the meeting was the first op-portunity for them to get to know eachother, visit EMBL Heidelberg and meetEMBL faculty. The second day started witha keynote lecture by Finland DistinguishedProfessor Jonathan Knowles, who recentlyretired from his position at Roche; he gavea stimulating insight into what’s needed tochange the way we look at medicine today.

“We all got a great overview of the scopeand breadth of the research at EMBL fromsome fantastic talks by the staff,” com-mented Kjetil Taskén, director of theNCMM. “With the new groups and theirvibrant new research programmes, it isclear that we can expect some huge discov-eries in neurobiology, medical genetics, in-fection medicine and cancer.”

Registration is now open for the first in abrand-new series of symposia organisedjointly by EMBL and EMBO.

‘Human Variation: Cause and Conse-quence’ will take place on 20-23 June at theEMBL Advanced Training Centre in Heidel-berg and will explore human genetic andphenotypic variability in the light of recentdevelopments in genomics, genetics andmolecular medicine. Speakers includeSvante Pääbo from Leipzig’s Max Planck In-stitute for Evolutionary Anthropology, KáriStefánsson, CEO of deCODE Genetics, andMichael Stratton, Deputy Director of theWellcome Trust Sanger Institute

The new series of EMBO/EMBL Symposiaaims to provide a platform to exchange ideason forward-looking topics and new life sci-ences developments. Complementary to thecourses and conference programmes orboth EMBO and EMBL, the symposia, ofwhich there will be up to six annually, willalso promote scientific communication andcollaboration across Europe.

Registration at www.embo-embl-symposia.org will close on 28 March 2010.A limited number of fellowships is available;visit the website at the address above for fur-ther details.

Burning down the houseBurns Night this year was a celebration offirsts, middles and lasts. It was the firsttime EMBL Heidelberg’s longest-runningparty was held in the new canteen, and thefirst time, too, that the ATC’s ‘party space’was used for the post-dinner disco. Liveband Stage Diva got birthday boy MatthiasHentze onto the floor – not literally, ofcourse – alongside the dozens of otherswho’d made it up to EMBL despite abadly-timed blizzard. While Matthias wascelebrating his half-century with friendsand colleagues, Christine Panagiotidis’table mates were holding back the tears;EMBL’s photographer, who has valiantlysupplied EMBL-&cetera with so manygreat pictures, is off to a new life inBarcelona in February.

Above: photographer Christine in action forEMBL&cetera for the last time. Photo:

Wolfgang Hübner

Right: Stage Diva in the ATC; far right,Master of Ceremonies George Reid.

Photos: Christine Panagiotidis

Joining forces

Photo: Marietta Schupp

21 January saw the members of the EMBLATC Corporate Partnership come togetherfor their first official event and the beginningof the next phase of the programme.

Managing directors, vice presidents andother top representatives from all fifteencompanies gathered for aperitifs in the ATCFoyer followed by scientific talks and a din-ner in EMBL Heidelberg’s new canteen. Be-forehand, representatives of the four‘founder’ partners – GE Healthcare, LeicaMicrosystems, Life Technologies and Olym-pus – had taken part in the first annual

round table discussion with DG Iain Mat-taj, Associate Director Matthias Hentzeand other EMBL scientists. “The visitorswere all really impressed by the ATC, andvery much enjoyed the evening,” says SeniorManager of Resource Development JörgFleckenstein.

The Corporate Partnership Programmewas launched in 2008 to enable companiesto support activities at the ATC and to helpEMBL in its mission to provide the besttraining to scientists from all over the world.The partners, who have an interest in lifesciences, will support the increased numberof courses and conferences organised everyyear, allowing EMBL to continue its pro-

gramme of top events in a world-classconference centre. Themoney will also be used to

set up fellowships worth €100,000 per yearto help attendees who would not otherwisebe able to afford to take part. “In addition, itwill allow us to organise events that would-n’t be financed otherwise, such as those indeveloping or unusual fields,” adds MatthiasHaury, Coordinating Manager of EICAT.

In return for their investments, the part-ners enjoy benefits such as theannual round table discussions.“During negotiations it had be-come clear that there was a desireon both sides to jointly developand run some additional trainingcourses in areas such as targettedgenome editing,” says Jörg. “As aresult EMBL, along with a num-ber of the partners, will establish asupplementary series to comple-ment the existing courses.”

EMBL&cetera • February 2010 3

New technology to boost EM opportunities

Who’ll be using the microscope?

Strengthening links with industry

Genecore head VladimirBenes chats to JohnGerace and SimoneGuenther of LifeTechnologies

The EMBL ATC CorporatePartnership:Founder partners:GE HealthcareLeica MicrosystemsLife TechnologiesOlympus

Corporate partners:Becton DickinsonBoehringer IngelheimPerkinElmer

QiagenSigma Aldrich

Associate partners:EppendorfIlluminaMerck SeronoNovartisSanofi AventisThermo Fisher Scientific

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EMBL’s cryo-EM research possibilities areset to expand with the purchase of a state-of-the-art piece of kit.

The next generation Titan KriosTM trans-mission electron microscope, made byFEI, will be delivered to EMBL Heidelbergin the autumn. The high-end instrument,of which there are only a few very newly-installed ones available to the scientificcommunity as a whole, will allow severalof EMBL’s groups to enjoy more stabilityand higher throughput in their EM work.

“This is significant step which will allowus to do what we do better, faster andmore efficiently,” says Structural and

Computational Biology Unit group leaderJohn Briggs (below, far left), whose labuses cryo-electron microscopy and to-mography to understand protein assem-blies and membrane shape. “The TitanKrios opens up novel opportunities forautomated work to study the structuraldiversity of viral and eukaryotic coatproteins at the membrane.” Unlike itspredecessors, the Titan Krios is completelyremotely controlled, and it also allows usersto load large amounts of samples from dif-ferent experiments at the same time.

Refurbishments of the former NMR areaare already underway to house the new

microscope. Thearea formerly usedby the Frangakisand Antony labs willbe transformed intoa microscope room,operational boothsand lab space. “Weexpect building tobegin in March, but with aslittle disruption as possible,” says SabineOertel, Building Maintenance’s Architec-tural Engineer. “The new area will have alittle atrium to let in the light, and theNMR people will at last have a corridor sothey don’t have to walk outside.”

As well as John Briggs’ established lab, two groups very new to EMBL will benefit fromthe microscope. Carsten Sachse’s group will be using it to obtain insights into themolecular mechanisms of autophagy. “With the Titan Krios’ automated data collection,state-of-the-art electron optics and improvements in image processing, we’ll be able toobtain very precise snapshots of the protein complexes that are involved in themembrane trafficking events of autophagy at previously unknown detail,” says Carsten(middle). Martin Beck’s new group will use it to to study the structure and function oflarge macromolecular assemblies. “We’ll be able to catch biologically rare events of thenuclear pore complex machinery previously unamenable to ultrastructural imaging,”explains Martin (near left).

EMBL&cetera • February 20104

A newmodel army?

PVC bacteria – and no, they’re not some-thing you might find at a fetish party –could offer insights into the evolutionaryhistory of eukaryotic cells, according toEMBL Heidelberg scientists.

Mattaj group research technician RachelSantarella-Mellwig, Complex AnalystDamien Devos (both pictured above) andmembers of other EMBL groups found pro-teins that shape the endomembrane systemin Planctomycetes-Verrucomicrobia-Chlamydiae (PVC) bacteria – proteins thathad previously been thought to exist only in

eukaryotes. In addition, as in eukaryotes,those proteins interact with the membranesfound inside the cells.

“The discovery of membrane-coat proteinsin these particular prokaryotes has funda-mental implications for eukaryotic evolu-tion,” says Damien, who led the study. “Italso means that, as relatively simple cells,PVC bacteria could be used as model organ-isms to study how the endomembrane sys-tem of more complex cells works.”

The endomembrane system is a networkof membrane-bound compartments – whichinclude organelles such as the endoplasmicreticulum and the Golgi complex – thatstores and transports material in the cell.Once thought to be unique to eukaryoticcells, the membrane-bound compartments –although not yet the associated proteins –were discovered in prokaryotes in 1991.

I kid ye notKidney biology was the name of thegame on 25 January, when EMBL-EBIhosted an international meeting forbioinformaticians and biomedical ex-perts to agree additions and improve-ments to the Gene Ontology (GO)vocabulary to describe the role of pro-teins in kidney development.

Organised by the Renal Gene Ontol-ogy Annotation (GOA) Initiative, ledby the EBI’s Rolf Apweiler and PeterScambler of the Institute of ChildHealth in London, the Kidney Devel-opment Ontology Content Meetingsaw researchers approve nearly 80new GO terms. “We lacked a com-prehensive, controlled vocabulary forkidney biology,” says Rolf. “Scientistswill be able to use this vocabulary toannotate experiments, providing astandardised way to describe theirwork and assist interpretation of re-sults, and ultimately improving un-derstanding of kidney development,function and disease.”

The new GO terms can be appliedto various scientifically importantspecies including fruit fly, zebrafish,mouse and humans. The ultimategoal of the Renal GOA Initiative, athree-year project funded by KidneyResearch UK, is to develop a uniquepublic data resource for kidney re-search using the popular GO vocab-ulary. For more information aboutthe Renal GOA Initiative, visit www.geneontology.org/GO.renal.shtml.

“Most scientists looking for an interestingpostdoctoral position don’t worry abouttheir pension – until it’s too late,” wroteformer Director of EMBO Frank Gannonin EMBO reports in 2007. Now EMBOhas become the first science organisationto offer a pension plan for its fellows.

The internationally portable plan aimedat the more than 400 recipients of EMBOLong-Term Fellowships was launched inJanuary this year – and within two weeks,more than half of the newly electedEMBO Fellows – including some atEMBL – had signed up. “In academia,you rarely know what the future mightbring,” says one, Megumi Onishi-See-bacher, a postdoc in the Korbel group.“A lot of my friends from the US whowork in industry started saving for theirretirement some time ago. I think it’swise to get started early.” Sebastian Mau-rer, a postdoc from the Surrey group, wasalso inspired by his peers. “I was disap-

pointed when I found out that scientistsin academia are not offered the same op-portunities as PhD holders working inthe private sector,” he says. “The EMBOpension seems very flexible, and I expectwe won’t have to pay for excessive bu-reaucracy.”

Many of the EMBO Fellows who en-rolled for the pension plan – managed bythe financial services company MLP –have already had their first experienceabroad and might change their jobs againin the future. The portable EMBO planscheme secures their savings and preventsthem from losing their contributions. Al-most all have decided to pay the fullamount of €100 per month, at which leveltheir contribution is matched by EMBOto the tune of an additional €100.

For more information about applyingfor an EMBO Fellowship, visitwww.embo.org/programmes/fellow-ships.html.

EMBO Fellows pension plan takes off

Money for ELIXIRThe European Life Science Infrastructurefor Biological Information (ELIXIR) has re-ceived investments of €3.5m from Denmarkand €1.85 from Finland.

An initiative involving 32 partners from 13countries, ELIXIR will establish a sustainableinfrastructure for biological information,supporting research and its applications inmedicine, the environment and society.“We’re delighted that these countries havetaken a strong lead in investing in ELIXIR,”says EMBL-EBI Director and ELIXIR coor-dinator Janet Thornton. “Europe must worktogether to reap the benefits of the flood ofbiological data.” The money comes from theDanish Agency for Science, Technology andInnovation, the Academy of Finland and aFinnish consortium of institutes.

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EMBL&cetera • February 2010

www.embl.org/alumni

i

John Kendrew Award winner 2010ens Preben Morth, a PhD student inPaul Tucker’s group at EMBL Ham-

burg from 2001 to 2005, is the winner ofthis year’s John Kendrew Young ScientistAward.

The selection committee was againfaced with an exceptionally difficult de-cision based on the outstanding qualityof applications, but after a long discus-sion at their meeting on 14 December,Preben emerged as the clear winner.

“Our decision was based on his out-standing contribution, especially sinceleaving EMBL, to the structural biologyof membrane proteins,” says EMBLAlumni Association chair Giulio Su-perti-Furga. “He has also been a real in-spiration to school students with hisenthusiastic involvement in science ed-ucation.”

Preben, who’s the first outstation scien-tist to win the award, is now an associateprofessor at Aarhus University in his na-tive Denmark. “I am incredibly proudto have received it,” he says. “JohnKendrew was one of the founding fa-thers of protein crystallography, and tohave received an award that carries hisname will always stand out as an ab-solute highlight of my career.”

Preben deserves particular recognitionfor solving the structure of sodiumpotassium ATPase, or sodium pump forshort, an enzyme found in the plasmamembrane of all animals. “Nobel laure-ate Jens Christian Skou – another Dane– discovered the sodium pump morethan 50 years ago,” he says. “During mypostdoc I pushed my project from ini-tial crystals to the complete determina-tion of the structure. The work taughtme to keep going even when successseemed unachievable. The foundationfor my interest and for structural biol-ogy was laid at EMBL Hamburg, study-ing bacterial two-components systems.”

The John Kendrew Young ScientistAward was launched in 2007 and isopen to scientists who left EMBL in thelast 2-5 years, were EMBL postdoctoralfellows or members of the EMBL Inter-national PhD Programme and are regis-

J tered members of the Alumni Associa-tion. The award, which is named afterthe first Director General of EMBL, SirJohn Kendrew, consists of a cash prizeof €1,000 plus a further €1,000 towardsthe cost of travel and accommodation,as the winner presents a lecture atEMBL lab day in Heidelberg. The prizewas generously sponsored by the EMBLPensioners’ Association for an initial pe-riod of three years, and funding for a

further three has been secured thanks togenerous donations from alumni (seewww.embl.org/donations/thankyou).

The selection committee would like tothank all applicants and wish them everysuccess for the future. Thanks also toEMBL faculty members for the nomina-tions, and Halldór Stefánsson and Kai Si-mons for theiradvice.

Current and forthcoming alumnievents:• 24 February: The first Alumni Local

Chapter meeting to be held in Irelandwill take place in the Science Gallery,Trinity College Dublin from 11:00 to13:00. This will be followed by a scien-tific event entitled ‘Bringing the Excel-lence of EMBL to Ireland’, with speakersfrom the Science Foundation Ireland,EMBL and the University Colleges of

Dublin and Cork.• 8 March: Staff-Alumni Reunion 2010.

See over for more details.

“John Kendrew was one of the founding fathersof protein crystallography, and to havereceived an award that carries his namestands out as a highlight of my career”

– Jens Preben Morth

Preben and the atomic structure of thehetero trimeric sodium pump

We want to hear from you! Tell usabout your personal or scientificachievements, an interesting eventin which you are involved or give usfeedback on alumni matters atalumni@embl.org.

EMBL&cetera • February 2010ii

www.embl.org/alumni

“I first met Albert in 1975, when he hadjust begun establishing an accountancysystem for EMBL – which, at the time,was still being established itself. All nineadministration members were workingfrom makeshift offices on the groundfloor of DKFZ. EMBL’s status as an inter-governmental organisation, with its pecu-liarities and privileges, was a completenovelty to anyone on the outside – includ-ing banks. Albert had to convince themthat EMBL was legal before he could evenbegin his regular day-to-day responsibili-ties!

Within a very short time, however, he’dsucceeded in developing a system tailoredto the needs of our organisation. It ranflawlessly and was always highly ac-claimed by auditors.

Albert was an accountant as you wouldimagine and hope one to be: responsibleand accurate, cordial but co-operative, re-liable and willing to help. When we had

moved into the newly erected EMBLbuilding, he, on top of ‘his’ accounting,very successfully assumed responsibilityfor the entire EMBL and EMBO budgetaccountancy, as well as for tax reimburse-ment procedures with national financeauthorities. But it was the more personalaspects of our collaboration that we inAdministration appreciated and loved.Albert, friendly and helpful, was simplyalways there when you needed his adviceor help. Once or twice a month during theinitial years of EMBL, Finance and Per-sonnel staff members would work week-ends on the payroll accounting which, inthose days, had to be done entirely byhand. On those weekends, Albert wouldinvariably bring in the most deliciouscakes, homemade by his wife Elfriede. Fordays ahead, we would be eagerly antici-pating the next.

When he retired in 1996, Albert imme-diately accepted the post of treasurer of

the Alumni Association, which he handedover to his former colleague Oscar Mar-tin-Almendral in 2007. When the EMBLpensioners formed an association, Albertwas elected onto the board as treasurer.

When I visited Albert a few weeks be-fore his death, he expressed a wish to visitEMBL one last time and see the new ATCbuilding. His youngest son and I prom-ised him that he would; yet, only a fewdays later, Albert deteriorated. We wereunable to grant him his wish. We have losta cherished colleague and friend who ren-dered outstanding service to EMBL.”

On 10 December last year Albert Stegmüller, who worked at EMBLfor 34 years, passed away at the age of 78. Here, Konrad Müller,Head of Personnel from 1975 until 1995, remembers him

Albert: ‘a cherished colleague and friend’

Whatever you do, make sure you’re inHeidelberg on 8 March! It’ll be a packedday starting with the EMBL Staff-AlumniReunion, the ATC Open House in theearly evening and the official farewell din-ner for Bernd-Uwe Jahn, followed bymusic throughout the night.

The daytime reunion will be dividedinto four sessions of talks covering EMBL,EMBO and the Alumni Association, sci-ence and society, the life sciences and thefuture of science. Speakers will includeEMBL celebrities past and present, fromcurrent DG Iain Mattaj to EMBL’s firstwoman group leader, Sara Courtneidge.The talks will take place in the new ATC,where the poster area of helix B – the yel-low one – will feature a display of alumniscience from the member states.

At 17:30 the second part of the day –ATC Open House – will begin, with

guided tours of the ATC, the unveiling ofthe Matti Saraste Courtyard in front ofthe building, and light refreshments. At-tendees will also get a sneak preview ofthe exhibition of scientific acheivementsat EMBL which will be on display inpreparation for the Official ATC Open-ing Ceremony on 9 March.

Dinner from 19:00 will be a chancefor staff and alumni alike to saygoodbye to Bernd-Uwe Jahn,EMBL’s Administrative Director from2001 to 2009. Live music and then adisco will round off the day’s events.

All EMBL and EMBO staff, alumni,EMBO members, Council delegatesand SAC members are invited. Regis-tration is required for all alumni;staff are requested to register forthe daytime programme only. Seewww.embl.org/alumni/reunion.

A day to remember EMBL Reunion:What’s cooking in the EMBL community?

8th MarchEMBL Advanced Training Centre9:00 Reception and continental breakfast10:00 Antipasto (Iain Mattaj, Maria Leptin,Colin McCallum, Giulio Superti-Furga)

Morning coffee12:00 Primo Piatto (Giuseppe Testa, FreddyFrischknecht, Giovanni Frazzetto)

Lunch

14:00 Secondo Piatto (Sara Courtneidge, LuisSerrano, Liliana Minichiello, Scott Fraser)Afternoon tea

16:00 Dolce e Caffe (Fotis Kafatos, EricKarsenti, Marja Makarow, Riccardo Cortese)

...and more!

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5EMBL&cetera • February 2010

Charting the growth of chemistry at EMBLThe proposed new EMBL Centre for Chem-ical Biology, several new methods and tech-niques, and the increased interest inchemistry and chemical biology among PhDapplicants were just some of the topicsunder discussion at the second EMBLChemical Biology retreat at the ISG hotel on10-11 January.

Some of EMBL’s newest group leaders –among them Christoph Merten, AlexanderAulehla and Rob Meijers – took the oppor-tunity to introduce their expertise to thegroup leaders working in the field, many ofwhom were attending for the second time.In addition, two specialists from the Chemi-cal Biology Core facility were invited, Can-dide Hounzou and Vineet Pande; Vineet

presented his work in computational drugdesign, a new expertise for the facility.

The scientific part of the meeting includedpresentations by Anne-Claude Gavin andClaude Antony, while new Genomics Biol-ogy unit group leader Christoph Merten in-troduced the audience to microfluidics, andEdward Lemke showed new routes to pre-pare fluorescently-labelled proteins for sin-gle molecule FRET measurements. VictorLamzin introduced his new database,ATOLL, which catalogues the annotated 3Dstructures of protein ligands for virtual drugscreening; Christoph Steinbeck and Rolf Ap-weiler gave a rundown of the EBI databasesrelevant to chemistry; and organiser CarstenSchultz gave an introduction to new meth-

ods for manipulating intracellular signallingevents. Finally, Paul Heppenstall presentedthe many unknowns of the somato-sensorysystem in the skin and his goal to image rareneuronal fibres in the mouse.

“It becomes very clear that the large poten-tial in methods and approaches alreadypresent at EMBL needs constant communi-cation to cope with the ever-changing scien-tific community and the rapid developmentin the field,” says Carsten. “There is large po-tential for collaborations, and what cannotbe provided in house should be addedthrough co-operations with experts outsidethe institute.”

The success of the 2010 retreat guaranteesa follow-up meeting in 2011.

A bigger picture of animal evolutionChEMBLdb – live andopen for business

The EBI’s vast online database of infor-mation on the properties and activities ofdrugs and drug-like small molecules andtheir targets was made freely available toall on 18 January.

ChEMBLdb, which boasts informationon an additional 100,000 compoundssince its transfer from biotech firm Gala-pagos NV in July 2008, is a unique re-source because of its focus on drugdiscovery and its size: the number ofsmall molecules is over 520,000, and itcontains over 2.4 million records of theireffects on biological systems.

The data – which include informationabout how small molecules bind to theirtargets, how these compounds affect cellsand whole organisms, and informationon the molecules’ absorption, distribu-tion, metabolism, excretion and toxicity– could be a critical bridge to help trans-late information from the humangenome into innovative drug therapies.

“There has already been big demandfor ChEMBLdb data, not only from largepharmaceutical companies but also fromacademic institutions and smaller com-panies who particularly benefit from thefree access,” says John Overington, leaderof the ChEMBL team at EMBL-EBI.www.ebi.ac.uk/chembldb

A major Nature paper and an inroad intothe understanding of animal evolution givesthe Arendt group – and first author FayChristodoulou in particular – good reasonto celebrate the beginning of 2010.

Using Detlev Arendt’s favourite ‘living fos-sil’, Platynereis dumerilii, the group studiedthe oldest known animal microRNAs,miR-100, miR-125 and let-7, and foundthat their specificity, conserved over hun-dreds of millions of years, in certain tissuesand cell types was the same in other animalssuch as sea anemones, worms and humans.

“This hints at the early origin of these tis-sues in animal evolution,” says Fay, who justfinished her PhD in Detlev’s lab and is re-turning to Greece as a postdoc in March. “Ifan ancient microRNA is found in a specificpart of the brain in one species – Platynereis– and in a similar location in anotherspecies – humans – then this brain partprobably already existed in the last commonancestor of both.”

That ancestor – which lived around 600million years ago – may already have had asophisticated brain that released hormonesinto the blood and was connected to varioussensory organs. “By looking at where in thebody different microRNAs evolved, we canbuild a picture of ancestors for which wehave no fossils, and uncover traits that fos-

sils simply cannot show us,” says Detlev,who headed the study while Fay carried outmost of the experimental work. The find-ings, published at the end of January, offernot just a glimpse into the past but also opennew avenues for studying the current func-tions of specific microRNAs.

“It was really rewarding to be able tobridge the previously unconnected areas ofsmall RNAs and evo-devo,” says Fay. “I’mlooking forward to reading about the follow-up work which will be continued by the lab.”

“It was really rewarding to beable to bridge the previouslyunconnected areas of smallRNAs and evo-devo”

– Fay Christodoulou

Fay (pre-haircut) and Platynereis

Check out EMBL’s

chemistry web pages

at www.embl.de/

research/chemistry/

index.html

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EMBL&cetera • February 20106

The moving in has already begun, but on8 March all EMBL staff – including thoseremaining in the main lab – will have afirst chance to look around the entireEMBL Advanced Training Centre at theATC Open House event, which starts at17:00.

After everyone has explored the doublehelix arrangement and figured out the wayto colleagues’ new offices, there’ll be afarewell dinner buffet in honour ofEMBL’s for-mer Adminis-trativeDirector,Bernd-UweJahn, who isretiring. Theparty willcontinue intothe wee smallhours of themorningwith a liveband anddisco.

Brush up your skillsIt’s never too late to make some new year’sresolutions, so why not build on your skillset and improve future employmentprospects by signing up for some of theGeneral Training and Development Pro-gramme’s soft skills, IT and languagecourses?

As well as offering some brand newcourses for 2010, the programme has alsodeveloped suggested ‘career developmentpaths’ to give some guidance about whatkind of training might be relevant at differ-ent career stages. For example, the develop-ment path for junior staff suggests that aPhD student might brush up on ScientificWriting or Presentation Skills at the begin-ning of their stay at EMBL, Time Manage-ment and Dealing with Pressure whilethey’re writing their thesis, and then Be-coming a Successful Interviewee towards theend.

“The programme offers courses at allEMBL sites to make it possible for scientistsand non-scientists alike to fit training into abusy work schedule,” says Head of PersonnelUlla Böhme. “We’re also open to suggestionsfor courses that are not currently included.”

New courses this year include Speed-read-

ing, Preparing for the Aca-demic Job Market, Inter-viewing, SuccessfulFellowship Writing, Suc-cessful Grant Writing,Fundamentals of ScientificPresentations and fourWiki courses.

Look out for the newbrochure (above) in yourpigeonhole or at any of theEMBL sites. Courses are subsidised,so the only expense incurred byattendees is travel and subsistence forcourses held at a different duty station.http://intranet.embl.de/general_training

A spring festival: Art @ EMBLEau no!

Are your scientific images gorgeous enoughto be put on public display? If so, EMBL’sScience and Society programme would liketo include them in an exhibition planned foran ‘Art @ EMBL’ event at EMBL Heidelbergon 30 April.

Five years after the last science and art spe-cial event in July 2005, the Science and Soci-ety committee members are putting togetheran exciting programme for the day, whichwill be split into two parts. From 14:00 to17:00 there will be a symposium, ‘Scienceand Art’ in the new ATC auditorium. Thekeynote lecture, ‘Splashing around: somestructural intuitions in art and science’ bythe University of Oxford’s Martin Kemp willbe followed by a panel discussion, with par-ticipation from Nadia Rosenthal, AslihanSanal, Giovanni Frazzetto and Diva Tommei.

The second part of the programme willconsist of various forms of art ‘happenings’by talented members of the community:music, a theatre performance and of coursethe exhibition, ‘Beauty in Science’.

“We’re looking for striking, pleasing, aes-thetic images – videos as well as still pictures– that demonstrate the inherent beauty inscience,” explains Science and Society pro-gramme manager Halldór Stefánsson.“From the pool of images that we hope willbe submitted we intend to select 20 for pres-entation on panels in the ATC, where a bigbeer session will provide a fitting end to theFriday afternoon.”

If you’ve got a great image to submit, visitwww.embl.de/aboutus/science_society/symposia/symp_30apr10/index.html.

Below: in 2005, the Science and Art event invited EMBL’s multi-talented staff to produce originalartworks. This year, it’s looking for the ‘beauty in science’

Open doors to all

Research from EMBL Grenoble couldopen up new approaches to increasingthe resistance of crops to water short-ages.

In a paper published in Nature at theend of 2009, team leader José Márquezand his collaborators at the Consejo Su-perior de Investigaciones Cientificas inValencia revealed how the plant hor-mone abscisic acid (ABA) governs re-sponses to stressful situations such asdrought. The groups discovered thatthe protein PYR1 interacts with ABA,which under normal, non-droughtconditions is inhibited by PP2C pro-teins. “We used X-ray crystallographyto find that the structure of PYR1 is likea hand which closes over the hormoneand inhibits PP2Cs activating the path-way,” explains José. “If you treat plantswith ABA before a drought, they takeall their water-saving measures and aremore likely to survive the shortage.”

The story was also covered in majornational newspapers, including El País.“What we’ll be doing now is using ourknowledge about what ABA interactswith and how to find other moleculeswith the same effect, as ABA is difficultand expensive to produce,” says José.

EMBL&cetera • February 2010 7

� Registration is now open for the fol-lowing EBI hands-on bioinformaticstraining course to help you get togrips with your data: ‘Plant bioinfor-matics’, 29-31 March (registrationdeadline 1 March). See www.ebi.ac.uk/training/handson to register andfor full programme details.

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

Please see http://intranet.embl.de/personnel/training_development/index.html for more information.

� A delegation from Malta’s Councilfor Science and Technology visitedEMBL Heidelberg on 4 February tolearn as much as they could in one day

about the lab’s units, core facilities andPhD programme. The visit was inpreparation for the possible future ad-dition of Malta to EMBL’s list ofmember states.

� Registration is now open for two Sci-ence and Society events: the EMBL-EBI Science and Society Symposium,‘Who Owns Science? Promises andPitfalls of the Public-Private Partner-ships’ on 19 March in Cambridge, andthe 11th EMBL/EMBO Science andSociety Conference ‘The Differencebetween the Sexes’ on 5-6 November.See www.embl.de/aboutus/science_society/index.html for details.

� EMBL Heidelberg had a visit from theEuropean Commission on 11 Januarywhen Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, Di-rector in Directorate F: Health in theDG Research department, came for aday. In between an introduction toEMBL and a tour of the core facilities,Ms. Draghia-Akli gave a presentationon new initiatives in health.

� Are you interested in art? EMBL islooking for staff members to join thenew ATCArt Committee, chaired byMatthias Hentze, which will considerapplications from interested artists indisplaying their work in the EMBLAdvanced Training Centre. Visitors to

the ATC would be able to view theoriginal artworks, which will be dis-played for a limited time period perartist, and purchase pieces if desired.If you’re interested, please contactMichael Thompson atdg-office@embl.org by12 March.

� EMBL-EBI’s AnnualScientific Report,which is producedevery year with thehelp of EMBL Heidel-berg’s Office of Infor-mation and PublicAffairs, is now avail-able to download atwww.ebi.ac.uk/Groups/reports/cur-rent /Annua lS c i ent i f i cRepor tComplete.pdf. This 194-page bookcovers the past year’s work of allEMBL-EBI’s services, research andsupport groups.

� Look out, too, for thenew Research at aGlance. With a pageper group, it’s a usefuloverview of EMBL’sresearch. www.embl.de/about us/commu-nication _outreach/publications/index.

newsinbrief

Get into the grooveWork from Daniel Panne at EMBL Grenoblehas pointed to a new possibility for DNA se-quence recognition by transcription factors.

In a Structure paper in May last year, heand his group presented the structure of atranscriptional repressor, MogR, bound toDNA – and found that, unlike most tran-scription factors we know, its binding speci-ficity seems to rely on the shape of DNArather than its sequence.

The conventional view is that transcriptionfactors literally read out the four-letter codeby binding to bases directly. The arrange-ment of atoms in a DNA molecule createstwo grooves – major and minor – that windalong its length, carving out the double helixshape. Many transcription factors bind inthe larger major groove as it gives better ac-cess to the bases to read their sequence.

“What’s special about MogR is that itbinds to a DNA sequence composed exclu-

sively of ‘A’s and ‘T’s,” explains Daniel.“These ‘A-tracts’ cause the DNA to bend,narrowing the minor groove and concen-trating its negative charge.” In other words,MogR recognises its target not so much bythe literal sequence of bases, but by theshape and electrostatic pull of the minorgroove that this sequence creates.

Since Daniel’s discovery, another group atthe Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Co-lumbia University trawled the protein struc-ture databases using MogR as a primeexample. Their findings suggest that shape-dependent readout could actually be a uni-versal method of sequence recognition. “Itseems that a whole number of structures ex-hibit this feature and that this is a generalphenomenon in protein-DNA recognition,”Daniel says. “MogR illustrates these princi-ples beautifully.”

– Lucy Patterson

It is with regret that we announce thedeath at the beginning of January of ourcolleague Frank Schmitz.

Frank started as head of the computergroup in EMBL Hamburg in 2000, whenhe was recruited from the IT departmentin EMBL Heidelberg. During his time inHamburg, he bought stability and struc-ture to the computer network and devel-oped the IT infrastructure to meetmodern standards, as well as overseeingthe growth and development of the com-puter group. He was also a Staff Associa-tion representative for EMBL Hamburg.

As a colleague he was very approach-able and reliable, and was a greatly val-ued member of staff. He will be dearlymissed.

– Rosemary Wilson

obituary

Frank Schmitz

html.

EMBL Heidelberg

10 March Wikis for Beginners

11 MarchPrinciples of the social web/Wikis for Beginners

17 March PowerPoint Advanced

26 March Effective Writing II

EMBL-EBI

9 April Effective Writing Part 1

EMBL Grenoble

23 & 24 March Presentation Skills

25 & 26 March Presentation Skills

EMBL&cetera issue 55, February 2010.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, KatrinaPavelin, Yasmin Alam-Faruque, YvonneKaul.Photographic support: EMBL Photolab.Printed by ColorDruck, Leimen.

Christoph Merten is the newest group leader in EMBL Hei-delberg’s Genome Biology Unit. He got his PhD at FrankfurtUniversity and then went to Cambridge to do postdoctoral re-search at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molec-ular Biology. Prior to coming to EMBL Christoph was a juniorgroup leader at the Institut de Science et d’ÍngénierieSupramoléculaire in Strasbourg. His group will focus on novel,droplet-based microfluidic approaches with applications in bi-ology and chemistry.

Two Junior Conference Officers have joined the team in the Course andConferences Office. Ruth Hazlewood (left) is from near Oxford, UK andread German studies at Manchester University. Before EMBL she worked atMarks and Spencers and Leeds University in training andconference coordination.AnjaMariaKroeffges (right) isfrom Bad Honnef, Germany, and studied event manage-

ment. EMBL is her first job after apprenticeships in tourism and festival or-ganisation in Kassel. While Ruth wants to improve her German at EMBL,Anja’s looking forward to working in an English-speaking environment.

events@EMBL people@EMBL3-5 March EMBL HeidelbergEMBOWorkshop: VisualizingBiological Data (VizBi)

8 March EMBL HeidelbergBernd-Uwe Jahn’s Official Farewell& ATC Open House

8-12 March EMBL HeidelbergCourse: Advanced Microscopy

9 March EMBL HeidelbergOfficial ATC Opening Ceremony

12 March EMBL HeidelbergScience and Society: A Dream ComesTrue: the TARA project. Eric Karsenti

18-20 March EMBL HeidelbergConference: The Complex Life ofmRNA: From Synthesis to Decay

18-20 March EMBL-EBICourse: Plant Bioinformatics

26 March EMBL HeidelbergStaff Association General Assembly& Clubs Fair

7-8 April EMBL HamburgHeads of Units/Senior ScientistsMeeting

10-13 April EMBL-EBICourse: In silico systems biology:network reconstruction, analysis andnetwork-based modelling

10-16 April EMBL MonterotondoEMBO Practical Course: MicroRNAprofiling: From in situ hybridisation tonew gen sequencing

14-15 April EMBL HeidelbergCourse: Microinjection into adherentcells – theory and practical exercises

20-21 April EMBL HeidelbergCourse: Techniques for the generationof transgenic mice

3-4 May Herxheim, PfalzDKFZ/EMBL retreat

3-4 May EMBL HeidelbergCourse: Next Generation SequencingData Analysis

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

Let it snow!

Bernd Pulverer, formerly editor-in-chief of Nature Cell Biol-ogy, is the new Head of Scientific Publications at EMBO andwill take care of the business development and management ofThe EMBO Journal, EMBO reports, Molecular Systems Biologyand EMBO Molecular Medicine. Bernd, who gained a biologyPhD at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at UniversityCollege London and pursued an academic career in Canada,the US and Austria before entering scientific publishing, re-places Les Grivell who retired in November 2009.

Well, the weather outside isfrightful...it was for most of January,anyway. But while EMBL’s adultswere cussing and blinding as theydug their cars out of the snow forthe tenth morning running, for thekids it was another story. “For someof the children it was the first snowthey’d seen in their lives,” saysEMBL Heidelberg Kinderhaus helperDominik Neuert. “We fetched thesledges from the cellar, and theweather proved to be the highlightof the new year.”

Kirsi Heerde, Personal Assistant to Administrative Director RalphMartens, is from Finland and has lived in Germany for nearly 10 years.Previously she worked as PA to the MD at a company in Nuremberg andat Linklater’s in Frankfurt. Kirsi is the first point of contact for Ralph andcan be e-mailed at dg-office@embl.org.