[Xenopus] XRET summary

Fri Sep 29 14:12:23 EDT 2017

Dear Xenopus Community,

The 2017 Xenopus Resources and Emerging Technologies (XRET) meeting was held at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts (USA) on August 26-29th. Organized by Marko Horb and the NXR and sponsored by Iwaki, Aquatic Enterprises, Aquaneering, Tecniplast, Nasco and Xenopus One, this meeting was jam-packed with exciting advances in Xenopus research covering topics in: gene editing; improvements in genomes and genome-wide analytics; proteomics; image analysis; cell-free systems; reprogramming and stem cells; nervous and immune systems; various aspects of cell biology; and organogenesis. There also were updates on the resource centers (NXR, XLRRI, EXRC and the Amphibian Research Center [(ARC/National BioResource Project (NBRP)] in Japan, the CSHL Press Xenopus protocols, and the newly formed International Xenopus Board. During the group discussion it was decided:

  *   To write an abbreviated “White Paper” (~2 pages) to emphasize how the emerging technologies will allow researchers to collaborate with clinicians and use Xenopus to model human disease. Mustafa Khokha and John Wallingford will take the lead on writing the draft.
  *   To put together a group of speakers on topics related to using Xenopus as a human genetics disease model for the 2018 American Society of Human Genetics meeting, which will be held in San Diego (CA, USA) October 16-20th. Mustafa Khokha will take the lead in organizing this; please contact him (mustafa.khokha at yale.edu) if you wish to present as part of this group.
  *   To organize a small Xenopus meeting to be part of The Allied Genetics Conference (cleverly abbreviated TAGC) to be organized by the Genetics Society of America (GSA) in 2020. This will not substitute for the 2020 International Xenopus Conference. Sally Moody, Soeren Lienkamp and Karen Liu will organize this; please contact Sally (samoody at gwu.edu) if you wish to participate.

Important dates and topics that were announced at the meeting include:

  *   The 2018 International Xenopus Conference will be held at the University of Washington, in Seattle (WA, USA) August 12-16. The organizers are Richard Harland and Rebecca Heald. Look for more information soon to be posted on XenBase (http://www.xenbase.org/entry/) and the GSA website (http://conferences.genetics-gsa.org/xenopus/index).
  *   Rachel Miller (Univ. Texas, Houston) and Greg Weber (Rutgers Univ.) received IXB travel awards to support their participation in the XRET meeting.
  *   Leonid Peshkin and Marc Kirschner are organizing a Jamboree to annotate the whole embryo proteomics and transcriptomics data and the single cell transcriptomics data that the group has generated. (pesha at hms.harvard.edu)
  *   The EXRC grant renewals are coming up soon. Matt Guille would like to receive letters of support before December. (matthew.guille at port.ac.uk)
  *   The upgraded versions of the Xenopus genomes that are Xenbase have been submitted to NCBI, but several web resources, such as ENSEMBL and UCSC, have not imported them.  Aaron Zorn would like community support to contact specific sites to get them to upgrade ASAP to make the genomic information readily available to the broader scientific community. (aaron.zorn at cchmc.org<mailto:aaron.zorn at cchmc.org>)
  *   A Company of Biologists workshop on “Developmental Biology of Birth Defects” has been proposed by Karen Liu, Mustafa Khokha and John Wallingford. If the proposal is accepted, Xenopus research needs to be included; they will let the community know via Xine (http://www.mbl.edu/xenopus/xine).
  *   The NIH grant supporting the “Xenopus laevis Research Resource for Immunobiology (XLRRI)” is up for renewal (https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/microbiology-immunology/xenopus-laevis.aspx). Jacques Robert would appreciate community support for this important resource (jacques_robert at urmc.rochester.edu<mailto:jacques_robert at urmc.rochester.edu>).
  *   Grants supporting the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory “Cell and Developmental Biology of Xenopus” course (https://meetings.cshl.edu/courses.aspx?course=C-XENO&year=17) are up for renewal. Mustafa Khokha and Karen Liu are working with CSHL staff to out these together. Please have your students, postdocs and colleagues apply to take the 2018 course.
  *   Reminder: please cite the NXR, Xenbase the XLRRI (and other resources) in your publications!! These citations are very important for future grant renewals. Please cite references and the RRID numbers, which can be found at: (http://www.xenbase.org/other/static/citingXenbase.jsp)
(http://www.mbl.edu/xenopus/citing-the-nxr)
(https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/microbiology-immunology/xenopus-laevis.aspx); cite Xenopus laevis Research Resource for Immunobiology Resource in your acknowledgments.

  *   Reminder: If you are not on the Xine listserve, please sign up at (http://www.mbl.edu/xenopus/xine) so you receive community updates.
  *   A very successful European Amphibian Club meeting, which included many Xenopus labs, was held this summer in France. The next EAC meeting will be in 2019 in Germany. Please contact Soeren Lienkamp for details (soeren.lienkamp at uniklinik-freiburg.de).

Please thank Sally Moody for providing us with this summary.

Look forward to seeing everyone next year at the University of Washington

Marko

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