Shop Talk: Annual Drosophila Research Conference, 2010

The 51st Annual Drosophila Research Conference took place in Washington, DC, from April 7–11, 2010. Washington, DC, the U.S. capital, is known for its national buildings and historically significant monuments. The Cherry Blossom festival, which was one of the major tourist attractions of the week, was at its peak – as can be seen on the program cover (Fig. 1). This year, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) received a record-breaking number of registrants to the conference. Despite low attendance at other scientific meetings, according to GSA Meetings Manager, Suzy Brown, this year's conference had the “largest number of registrants than any other previous years.” There were 170 talks, more than 850 posters and 13 workshops; so there was a range of information that people could pick according to their interests. Two members of the Drosophila community received GSA honors. Sherry Marts, GSA executive director, awarded Utpal Banerjee (University of California, Los Angeles) the Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education and William Gelbart (Harvard University, Cambridge) received the George W. Beadle Award for outstanding contributions to the community of genetics researchers. The winner of the Larry Sandler Memorial Lecture Award was Leonardo Barbosa Koerich, a student of Antonio Carvalho (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). The topic of his dissertation was the low conservation of gene content of the Y chromosome across 12 species of Drosophila. He worked with 11 genes from the Drosophila melanogaster Y chromosome and located them on the other sequenced Drosophila species. His work was a very nice evolutionary genetic analysis revealing that the Y chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster is actually gaining more genes than losing. This goes against the canonical theory that the Y chromosome is a degenerated X-chromosome that will eventually become fully degenerated. Fig. 1 Cover page of the abstract book of the 51st Annual Drosophila Research Conference held at Washington DC from April 7–11, 2010. Courtesy: Genetics Society of America (GSA). Leonardo's seminar was followed by a panel presentation with a theme discussing the major achievements of renowned Drosophila scientists and their impact on the direction of Drosophila research. The panel was introduced by Hugo J. Bellen (Baylor College of Medicine, Houston) and was started by Thomas Kaufman (Indiana University, Bloomington), who talked about the discovery of the white (w) gene and how it led to future Drosophila genetics. Gerald M. Rubin (Janelia Farm, HHMI, Ashburn) discussed the cloning of w and the sequencing of the genome. Allan Spradling (Carnegie Institution for Science, Baltimore) talked about P-elements and their use in transformation, insertional mutagenesis, and the Genome Disruption Project. Susan Celniker (University of California, Berkley) gave a history of the genome project after the initial sequencing was completed and the development of more genomic tools, including the very high-throughput next generation sequencers. Norbert Perrimon (Harvard Medical School, Boston) discussed how the sequencing of the genome has impacted new tool development for Drosophila melanogaster. Finally, William Gelbart talked about annotation of the Drosophila genome then and now, and delivered a brief history of FlyBase. The First Plenary Session began with the award ceremony of the Annual Drosophila Image Award. Among the 50 images submitted for this award, only 10 were selected as finalists. Guy Blanchard (University of Cambridge, UK) won the award for an outstanding image demonstrating quantitative cell shape changes during gastrulation. Images from F. Coumailleau et al. (University of Geneva, Switzerland) showing directional transport of endocytosed Delta during asymmetric cell division and S. MacArthur et al. (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley) demonstrating quantitative differences in DNA occupancy by transcription factors that determine very different output expression patterns were runners-up for the image award. Duojia (DJ) Pan (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD) started off the first plenary session talks discussing his work in the control of organ size and tumorigenesis by the Hippo (Hpo) pathway. He showed how the Hpo kinase cascade regulates the gene cascade causing apoptosis and proliferation. Previous work from DJ's laboratory has demonstrated that the mammalian pathway is highly conserved and functions in mice as it does in Drosophila melanogaster. Over-expression of a downstream component of the Hpo pathway, YAP [the mammalian homolog of yorkie (yki)], in the mouse liver causes a reversible increase in liver size; but chronic over-expression leads to hepatocellular carcinoma. Kenneth D. Irvine (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway) talked about his work on Fat (Ft) as a tumor suppressor and a regulator of planar cell polarity. Ft is a cadherin molecule and the Ft pathway has distinct mechanisms that regulate growth versus planar cell polarity. He showed that Ft is part of the Dachs (D), Dachsous (Ds), and Four-jointed (Fj) pathway. Fj and Ds are expressed in complementary gradients. Ds is a ligand that activates Ft, but also polarizes the cells. Clones of ds and fj have opposite effects on planar cell polarity, but have the same transcriptional effects. Chiara Cirelli (University of Wisconsin, Madison) discussed her work on sleep and synaptic plasticity. It is thought that sleep does one of two things in the CNS: enables synaptic plasticity or glycogen replenishment. The glycogen theory is not supported in all animals. Interestingly, fly sleep is very similar to mammalian sleep. In sleep-deprived flies, the expression of synaptic proteins is increased in whole brains and single neurons, giving support to the synaptic plasticity theory. Interestingly, similar changes were seen in period (per) mutants that have circadian rhythm problems. Ting Xie (Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO) started off the next part of the first plenary session by talking about his contribution to the understanding of germline stem cells (GSC) in the Drosophila ovary. He highlighted the concept that GSCs have a collaborative and rival relationship with one another. For example, he identified some mutant GSCs that have a more competitive advantage over normal stem cells and actually push the wild-type stem cell out of its niche. These mutant cells express more E-cadherin than the wild-type GSC, so it is retained in the niche better. He also discussed his findings of how apparently routine “housekeeping” genes can also be specifically involved in the maintenance of GSCs. These general proteins, including eIF4A and CSN4, have GSC phenotypes, while other family members of these proteins do not have GSC phenotypes. Eric H. Baehrecke (University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester) discussed his work on macro-autophagy, which is considered a bulk, non-selective method of destruction. Autophagy is involved in the death of at least four different cell types in Drosophila. The model he uses is salivary gland cells, since at 12 hr after puparium formation they undergo autophagy. He demonstrated that caspases or autophagy genes are sufficient to kill salivary gland cells and they act in an additive manner. He found that some of the engulfment genes that were turned on in his microarray analysis were phagocytosis receptors, including draper (drpr). By expressing drpr RNAi in the salivary gland, autophagy is inhibited. However, drpr appears to have no role in autophagy in the blood or fat body (other sites of autophagy in Drosophila). Lyn Cooley (Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT) discussed her work on oogenesis. She found a reversible response to nutritional stress in the post-germarium to pre-vitellogenic stages of oogenesis. She performed an oocyte-enriched protein trap screen and found many RNA-binding proteins that localize to the oocyte through a microtubule-dependent mechanism. In the protein-poor condition (i.e., nutritional stress), many of these RNA-binding proteins start forming aggregates in the nurse cells, which might be due to microtubular condensation. This process is reversible; by giving the females food again, the aggregates disappear. She found that this nutrition response works through insulin signaling: reduced egg chamber production in poor food conditions operates in an insulin-dependent manner. Apart from the excellent first plenary session, the conference was composed of multiple platform and poster sessions on many topics. Since we are not able to cover the broad spectrum of topics presented in this meeting, we present some highlights in this report.