Workshop Details
Zebrafish in the Classroom
Co-Chairs: Jill Morris, Steve Farber
Zebrafish as tools to educate in the K-16 (school and undergraduate) classroom.
As scientists we have an obligation to educate the public about what we do as scientists, as well as to recruit and retain students needed for a technologically competent workforce. In this workshop Lara Hutson (Williams College) will describe her approach to using zebrafish in the undergraduate classroom, David Hyde (Notre Dame) will discuss his outreach efforts and his biology textbook project, and Steve Farber (Carnegie Institution) will describe an extensive outreach program to public schools in the Baltimore and Philadelphia areas. The second part of the workshop will involve small discussion groups on developing teaching modules for K-16, starting an outreach program, and finding funding to support your efforts in outreach and teaching.
Zebrafish Husbandry
Chair: Carole Wilson
Rapid growth in the use and prevalence of the zebrafish model mirrors trends already observed for rodents, in which numerous advances in research were eventually matched by the development of scientifically based husbandry standards. A similar situation now confronts the zebrafish research community, as improvements in research technology have far outpaced developments in the care and management of the animals. This workshop explores a number of key elements of zebrafish husbandry that are on the brink of change, including regulatory oversight, facility design, disease management and genetic maintenance of stocks. The goals of this session will be to stimulate productive discussion on these topics and to help establish a basic framework from which the field can be moved forward. There will be 4 presentations each lasting approximately 15 - 20 minutes, with 10 - 15 minutes in between presentations for debate and discussion.
Analyzing Adults & Juveniles
Co-Chairs: Kenneth Poss, Steve Farber
The zebrafish has broadened as a model system beyond early patterning and organogenesis, into late larval and adult biology that includes organ physiology, organ regeneration and homeostasis, disease models, and behavior. This workshop will highlight how some investigators are using advantages of zebrafish for some of these pursuits, it will address how technologies need to be modified or developed for stages at later developmental stages, and it will provide a forum to consider the prospects ahead. There will be 4 presentations of 10-15 minutes on diverse aspects of juvenile and adult biology, and ample time for discussion. We encourage abstracts to be submitted for oral presentation in this workshop.
Assessing Infection & Immune Response
Chair: Jeff Yoder
The use of zebrafish for assessing infection and the vertebrate immune response is growing rapidly. However, the development of the cellular and molecular tools needed for making full use of this model species has not kept pace. The goal of this workshop is to discuss the current status of available immune-related tools and what may be “in the works” by different labs (e.g. new mAbs, transgenic lines, infection models, etc.)
This 2-hour workshop will begin with a series of short oral presentations describing new immune-related “tools” being developed by various lab. Presentations will be selected from submitted abstracts. This will be followed by an open forum to discuss and define the priorities for immune-related tool development in the future.
Live Imaging of Morphogenesis
Co-Chairs: Ashley Bruce, Karuna Sampath
High resolution imaging of morphogenesis is one of the biggest strengths of zebrafish, and one that sets it apart from other model vertebrates. The goal of this session is to highlight significant advances as well as new techniques that are being used to address the key questions in morphogenesis, in the context of early patterning as well as organogenesis. This 2-hour workshop will have a variety of talks (invited as well as abstract-selected), with the possibility of more focused and in-depth discussion groups.
Cell signaling (Reporters, Chemical Screens)
Co-Chairs: Randy Peterson, Michael Tsang
This workshop on chemical screens and transgenic reporters will be a forum to highlight emerging technologies and assays pertaining to small molecule screening. Tools relevant to screening with chemical libraries and image analysis software will be presented and discussed. This includes the generation of transgenic reporter lines that measure signaling events in vivo and the development of novel assays to measure zebrafish behavior and physiology. Presentations will include talks from invited speakers and selected from submitted abstract, with extensive time devoted for discussion.
Microarrays/High-Throughput Sequencing
Co-Chairs: Yi Zhou, Shawn Burgess
This session will address (1) the current state of the art and uses for microarray technologies and 2) applications of high-throughput sequencing technologies to zebrafish research.
Microarrays have been used to profile gene expression to characterize and study genes that control interesting biological phenotypes. The major platforms for zebrafish are somewhat obsolete, and efforts are planned to improve applications of different technologies. This workshop will try to include information from all platforms in presentations and discussions. Microarray technology is complementary to the next generation sequencing technologies for analyzing gene transcriptionregulation.
We will also discuss application of high-throughput sequencing technologies (i.e. 454/Roche, Solexa/Illumina, SOLid/ABI) to problems in zebrafish biology. There are a wide variety of new possibilities that emerge with these high throughput sequencers that could be explored both as individual projects and community efforts. For example there is the Mouse Transcriptome Project done by Massively Parallel Signature Sequencing (MPSS) that could be replicated in zebrafish using a platform superior to the one used for the mouse project. Possible uses for TILLING or cSNP detection, etc. could be discussed.
This workshop will be open to submitted abstracts may also include presentations from company representatives for the main platforms.
Targeting & Conditional Gene Expression
Co-Chairs: Adam Hurlstone, James Chen
Emerging technologies for conditional gene regulation will provide new opportunities for zebrafish models of vertebrate development, physiology, and disease. This workshop will focus on recent advances in gene regulation technologies, including caged morpholinos, RNA interference, and other methods that allow spatial and/or temporal control of zebrafish gene function. The workshop will feature short talks on specific approaches and a community-wide discussion of current methodologies and future challenges. Presentations will include both invited speakers and talks selected from submitted abstracts.
Emerging Gene Knockout Technology
Co-Chairs: Joe Yost, Nathan Lawson
In this workshop, we will provide an overview of the latest technological developments that now enable researchers to perform targeted gene inactivation in zebrafish. We will focus on the use of zinc finger nucleases to generate site-specific mutagenic lesions in the zebrafish genome, and contrast this approach to other emerging technologies. A central goal of the workshop will be to provide a general introduction to zinc finger nuclease technology, including relevant technical and biological background. Participating speakers will describe several successful attempts at applying this technology to generate knockout zebrafish. In addition, more preliminary results on the use of zinc finger nucleases for more subtle genomic manipulations (e.g. gene knock-in) will be presented. Most importantly, we will place particular emphasis on how to make this technology accessible to the general zebrafish community.
ZFIN/NCBI/Sanger bioinformatics tutorial
Co-Chairs: Garth Brown (NCBI), Kerstin Howe (Sanger), Sridhar Ramachandran (ZFIN)
Zebrafish Web Resources.
The zebrafish community is faced with an immense and rapidly growing body of public data. This workshop will focus on web resources available to assist with the integration and analysis of these data. NCBI, the Sanger Institute and ZFIN will present brief overviews of important features of their sites. Presentations will be followed by a discussion focusing on the current and future web resource needs of the zebrafish community. We welcome submitted abstracts from others with web resources to share.
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