February 2021

 King's paper on zebrafish olfactory rod cells is now published in Frontiers in Physiology:

Tanya gave a virtual seminar at the NIH National Institute for Deafness and Communication Disorders (NIDCD), hosted by Doris Wu.

January 2021

At the end of the month, lab members attended the virtual 33rd Head Group Meeting on Craniofacial and Neural Development, and enjoyed the Peter Thorogood Memorial Lecture delivered by Robert Kelsh (University of Bath).

We exhibited work from the lab at the Jacalyn Duffin Health and Humanities Conference Sensations and the Sensational, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.  Our images looked very fine on the walls of their virtual art gallery:

We also enjoyed excellent talks at the one-day North of England Developmental Biology Symposium 2021, organised by Marysia Placzek, Shane Herbert and Raman Das.

December 2020

Ana and Anzar both gave excellent presentations of their work at the White Rose Mechanistic Biology DTP symposium.  Ana won second prize for her flash presentation.  Congratulations!

Congratulations also to King Yee, who won first prize for her excellent talk in the Departmental 1st Year Postgraduate Symposium!

We ended the year with a lab Christmas quiz:

November 2020

Congratulations to Ana Jones and Anzar Asad for their excellent talks in this year's Departmental Postgraduate Symposium (3rd year students).  Anzar won first prize for his presentation!

Congratulations to King Yee Cheung on her first author manuscript on the discovery of zebrafish olfactory rod cells, now posted on bioRxiv!  You can read the full manuscript here.

October 2020

A warm welcome to Nahal Shahidan, who starts her PhD in the lab, funded by an EPSRC studentship in partnership with the Neuroscience Institute.  Nahal joins us with an MSci in Neuroscience from the University of Nottingham, and has completed an industrial placement year at our collaborating company, Sosei Heptares, in Cambridge.  Her project will continue our work on the adhesion GPCR Adgrg6, which has important roles in inner ear morphogenesis and myelination of the peripheral nervous system.  Nahal will be co-supervised by Sarah Baxendale and Antonio de la Vega de León (Information School), and will return to Sosei Heptares for a placement as part of her PhD.

Anzar and Nahal both attended a two-day online adhesion GPCR workshop in early October.  Nick attended the Crick Bioimage Analysis Symposium, and towards the end of the month, the lab also enjoyed talks at the 11th European Zebrafish Meeting, which was held virtually.  We shared the highlights of all these conferences in our weekly lab meeting. 

September 2020

Start of semester: we welcome Rita Dapaah and Melissa Wei Yi Tan to the lab for their Level 3 research projects. Rita and Melissa will be completing their 'dry' research projects remotely, on image analysis and CRISPR design, respectively. 

Rita reflects on activities from her previous year in BMS, including a fund-raising event for Cancer Research UK, on her LinkedIn profile here. 

Ana was delighted to receive a surprise package of goodies in the post from the Node, as a prize for her excellent poster presentation at the virtual joint BSDB/Genetics Society meeting earlier in the year (see the blog post, March 2020). Congratulations Ana!

June–August 2020

By the end of June, we were back in the lab, with everyone working in bubbles at reduced capacity (week on/week off) and with social distancing. We have been supported throughout by our wonderful aquarium team and the 'Return to Campus' team for Firth Court (Andy, Freek and Melanie). Time at home has been spent analysing data gathered in the lab, attending webinars and writing manuscripts, and everyone has managed to get an amazing amount done.