TT2010 meeting
A brand new, really nice and very reminiscent logo has been released for the next Transgenic Technology Meeting, TT2010, that will be held in Berlin (Germany), on March 22-24, 2010, at MDC, under the organisation and coordination of Boris Jerchow.
Join/Renew your ISTT Membership
From 2009, for those 2008 technician/student ISTT members willing to renew their 2009 ISTT Membership we only require an email sent to ISTT from their supervisor confirming that their labour situation remains the same and therefore they qualify in 2009 as technician/student members. Follow the indications provided in this web site to join/renew your ISTT membership.
This image should display current time and weather conditions in Madrid, Spain
Planning a trip to visit a colleague within the animal transgenesis field? Would you like to know what time is it and what is the weather like in a city where your colleague is working/living?.
These questions are now easier to answer and readily possible from the ISTT web site. There is a new web page with dynamic and contantly-updated information displaying current time and weather conditions in 40 cities around the world that have ISTT Members living and working in them. The web site uses information and resources from the Weather Underground web page.
This new web site is directly accessible from the ISTT LINKS web page, and includes 40 small icons, as many as cities around the world included, called “weather stickers“, as the one shown here below, with current time and temperature (in ºC and ºF degrees scales) in that city and a changing background indicative of the weather forecast.
Click here for Madrid, Spain weather forecast
Rat ES cells have been obtained
The end of the past year included an outstanding experiment published on December 26, in Cell, from Austin Smith’s laboratory in Cambridge, UK.
Capture of authentic embryonic stem cells from rat blastocysts. Buehr M, Meek S, Blair K, Yang J, Ure J, Silva J, McLay R, Hall J, Ying QL, Smith A. Cell. 2008 Dec 26;135(7):1287-98.
Indeed, the group of Austin Smith, succeeded to obtain the first rat ES cells capable of colonising somatic and germ-line tissues, capable of forming chimeras, and capable of transmitting their genome to the progeny. The key of this achievement, in contrast to many previous attempts by various groups, has been the use of a combination of defined specific inhibitors (3i/2i) in the presence of LIF. Specially successful was the combination of 2i (inhibitors of the MEK and GSK3 pathways)+LIF. Even though the success rate is still rather low it lays the ground for future experiments in order to find the most adequate combinations of rat ES-cell donors and rat blastocysts for optimal results.
In 2003 we learnt about the cloning of rats by an experiment conducted in collaboration between Chinese and French scientists, commanded by Jean Paul Renard and first authored by Qi Zhou, awarded the TT Prize in Uppsala, at the TT2004 meeting (Zhou et al. Science 2003, Nov 14;302(5648):1179). It was envisaged this could be a way to overcome the limitation of a lack of rat ES cells for the production of specific rat knock-out strains. However, that experiment has proven very difficult to reproduce. Now, with this achievement by Austin Smith’s lab, and after eventually finding the optimal rat strain combinations and tissue culture conditions, it appears more feasible the possibility of preparing a variety of specific rat KOs.
In summary, a paper worth reading and discussing in laboratories and transgenic facilities. While reading this paper, it is particularly interesting how much they could learn from failure experiments and how they eventually came across a combination of factors that resulted in the generation of germ-line transmission capable rat ES cells.
Rat picture obtained from this WEB.
Happy New Year!. From January 1st, 2009 all current ISTT Members are kindly invited to renew their membership for the year 2009. The standard renewal period will run until March 31st, 2009. We have NOT changed the membership fee in 2009, that will be same as it was for 2008 (and 2007 and 2006). Ordinary and Corporate Members will be kindly requested to pay 60 Euros. Students/Technicians will qualify for a 50% reduction fee and thus, upon presenting the corresponding proof-of-status, will qualify for a 30 Euros fee.
Later on, if you have not renewed by April 1st, all your ISTT tools and resources will be deactivated. But, you will still be able to renew, and to re-activate your ISTT tools and resources, upon directly contacting us before December 31st, 2009. Then, we will provide you with an appropriate link for late renewals.
If you are not yet a member of ISTT we encourage you to submit your application. There are many membership benefits, including: access to on-line contents of Transgenic Research, discounts at TT meetings and other events co-sponsored and co-organised by ISTT, access to a great variety of privileged web content (videos, pictures, talks, methods, chats, forums, etc…), elegibility for ISTT travel awards…
We hope to receive your renewal or registration application soon. Thanks for joining / renewing !
ISTT
