NewsSplash Issue 7 Fall 2019

2019 Election Results

Thank you everyone who participated in the 2019 Election and congratulations to the elected Officers and Directors!

9th Strategic Conference for Fish Investigators

(SCZI 2020)

Abstract Submission and Registration Open!

Principal Investigators are invited to submit an abstract and register for the 9^th Strategic Conference for Fish Investigators (SCZI), taking place February 4 – 8, 2020 in Taipei, Taiwan. All abstracts are due on October 31, 2019. Additionally, to receive the lowest registration rate, register by October 31, 2019. After this date, registration rates will increase. Current members receive a registration discount.

In September 2019, the International Zebrafish Society (IZFS) moved to a new database platform. This will require all meeting registrants and abstract submitters to create a new account. If you haven’t already created a new account, please select “I do not already have an account on the IZFS website” and enter the email address you previously had on file, during abstract submission or registration.  If your email address has changed, please contact IZFS at info@izfs.org or +1 (414) 918-9835 to change your email address on file.

For more information on the conference, please visit the conference webpage.

The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC) 2020

The International Zebrafish Society (IZFS) is pleased to participate in The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC) 2020, taking place April 22 - 26, 2020 in Metro Washington DC. The meeting’s unique format will provide multiple opportunities to interact face-to-face with the zebrafish research community to share work, learn about the latest research and tools, build community, and recruit newcomers to the field.

IZFS members have an exciting opportunity to not only receive discounted rates for both abstract submission and registration fees, but to also receive a complimentary 2020 GSA membership if you register for the conference by December 5, 2019.

IZFS members who are current in their dues received a code from the IZFS office via email to use during the TACG registration process in order to receive the discount and free membership.  To verify your membership status, please email info@izfs.org.
 

Opinion

Reducing the Number of Zebrafish Conferences – An Essential Contribution to Limiting the Human Negative Impact on the Planet

In the past 10 years the number of Zebrafish Research Conferences has increased much faster than the size of the community. This brings the crucial question: Do we need so many Zebrafish Conferences?

This is a burning issue not only because it may strategically become more important to talk to other research communities than our own to keep high visibility and funding, but most importantly because the health of our planet needs urgent care (1). Indeed, "anthropogenic climate change is the single greatest challenge facing our planet and our species” (2). We all recognize the importance of scientific conferences for exchange of ideas, critical feedback on unpublished research, networking, and integrating our trainees to the field. However, each community needs to take actions to improve its impact on pollution. An International Zebrafish Conference of 1000 participants produces an average of 1500 tonnes of CO2 from flights only. We urgently need to discuss how to maximise the benefits of conferences whilst minimising our environmental impact.

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IZFS Environmental Sustainability and Responsibility Statement

Prompted by the letter from Houart et al., IZFS would like to engage its members in a discussion to shape its environmental sustainability and responsibility statement:

Here are some of the steps that IZFS is taking, and others that IZFS is committed to discuss:

1. Setting up an active Webinar series as a first step towards virtual conferences.
2. Exploring the various options for the live streaming of conferences and using video links/holography instead of flying speakers in.
3. Setting up a committee to investigate and move environmental sustainability and responsibility initiatives forward.
4. Hold conferences in places (countries or states) with a positive environmental sustainability and responsibility policy (eg, countries that have signed the Paris Accord (and have not declared their intention to leave it).
5. Work with environmentally responsible conference sites (eg, LEED certified sites).
6. Continue working with other Zebrafish organizations (eg, ZDM) to coordinate meeting (eg, hold partially overlapping meetings).
7. Keep rotating the meetings between North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific in order to bring the conferences to the largest communities and minimize their travel.
8. Introduce an environmental fee into the registration costs which would be transferred to a Carbon Offset organization and/or structure registration fees to reward those travelling by train and penalize those travelling by plane or single occupant cars.

Please email your comments and suggestions to sustainability@izfs.org.

Didier Stainier, Mary Mullins, Phil Ingham

Member News

Promotions, awards, and labs moving – see current news from the zebrafish community here.

Meet the PI Members!

IZFS welcomes new PIs who started their lab groups in 2018 - 2019. Click here to meet our new colleagues!

IZFC Meeting Recap

14th International Zebrafish Conference

The 2019 IZFC, hosted by the International Zebrafish Society, took place on June 12-16, 2019 and fish investigators from around the world were present in China for the first-ever IZFS International Zebrafish Conference in the Asia-Pacific region. Over 1,000 attendees attended the meeting!

View photos from the event here!

Join Us for the Next International Zebrafish Conference!

Save the Date!
June 16 - 20, 2021
Montréal, Québec, Canada

Other Community Meeting Recaps

Utah Fish Conference (UFC)

The Zebrafish Interest Group at the University of Utah held its first Utah Fish Conference (UFC) on October 8, 2018. The conference was organized by pre- and post-doctoral trainees to celebrate the University’s Zebrafish Interest Group (ZIG), as well as to unite the Mountain West fish community. This 1-day event hosted over 80 attendees from 6 institutes. UFC was sponsored by the University’s ZIG, as well as Tecniplast USA, Aquatic Enterprises, IDT, Aquaneering, wFluidx, NCI, NEB, Zeiss, ThermoFisher by Life Technologies, and Developmental Dynamics.

Pictured: Members of the Organizing Committee (Left to Right: Chelsea Herdman, Alexis Fulbright, and Penny Lam) caught chatting with Dr. North during a coffee break.

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2019 Ohio Zebrafish Undergraduate Research Conference

March 23, 2019 marked the inaugural Ohio Zebrafish Undergraduate (OHZU) Research Conference at Ashland University, Ohio. The OHZU meeting was organized by Dr. Sarah Petersen (Kenyon College), and Dr. Mason Posner (Ashland University), who aimed to create a space to highlight the phenomenal work of undergraduate researchers and create a network of junior scientists throughout the Midwest and beyond. The conference brought together undergraduate zebrafish researchers from fourteen institutions, largely across Ohio but also Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. The meeting was held with sponsorship from Charles River Laboratories (Platinum Level), DanioLab (Gold), and Aquaneering (Silver), and PeerJ sponsored the Best Overall Presentation Award, which would cover publication fees for the undergraduate’s project in PeerJ. In addition, sponsoring exhibitors with graduate program representatives came from Case Western Reserve University, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Cleveland Clinic, and Ohio State University. The meeting also had generous institutional support from Ashland University and Kenyon College to make this first OHZU meeting accessible to a wide variety of researchers.

Pictured: Danielle Quallich from Ryan Thummel's lab at Wayne Stat University with Sarah Peterson. You can read more about Danielle's work on PeerJ Journal.

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Mid-Atlantic Regional (MARZ) Baltimore, MD

The recently renovated "Leadership Hall" auditorium of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore was the most recent venue of the 2019 Spring Mid-Atlantic Regional Zebrafish Meeting, hosted and organized by Drs. Norann Zaghloul and Jim Du. Once again, this bi-annual meeting gathered zebrafish scientists at all academic levels from all over the east coast for a day of cool scientific interactions. Known to be a fantastic platform for trainees, this meeting was not the exception, as we witnessed oral presentations given by graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and postbaccalaureates.

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The First International Zebrafish Workshop in Qatar

The conference took place at the Biomedical Research Center at Qatar University. This five-day event involved a two-day conference and three-days of hands on training session. Renowned zebrafish researchers gave novel examples of zebrafish research for investigating a variety of disorders including, cardiac, neuronal, metabolic disorders and cancer. There was a total of 18 national and international invited speaker.

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South West (UK) Zebrafish Meeting

The inaugural South West (UK) Zebrafish Meeting was held on September 9^th, 2019, hosted by University of Bristol and generously funded by the Company of Biologists, Tecniplast, Society for Experimental Biology, IDEXX, Eurofins, NC3Rs and University of Bristol. Prof. Paul Martin opened the meeting in entertaining style and set the tone for a fun and engaging meeting. The event succeeded in bringing together researchers in the region (and beyond) to share new data and technological advances in zebrafish research. The broad range of scientific fields kept everyone on their toes and several delegates noted this as a highlight.

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Photo Credit: Zheng Jiang

For more information visit the event page here.
 

IZFS/ZDM Dual Membership Discount

With the cooperation of the Zebrafish Disease Models Society, IZFS will be offering a 10% reduction on your annual dues. ZDMS is offering this 10% discount for its members t hat are also IZFS members. Use Promo Code ZDMS to get the discount when renewing with ZDMS. To recieve the 10% discount with IZFS, please email info@izfs.org with the request.

Fish and Chips

ZFIN: Zebrafish data at the Alliance of Genome Resources

The Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance: alliancegenome.org) is a joint project involving six model organism databases, including ZFIN, and the Gene Ontology Consortium. One primary goal of The Alliance is to develop and maintain sustainable genome information resources that facilitate the use of diverse model organisms in understanding the genetic and genomic basis of human biology, health and disease.  The Alliance currently combines data sets from human and model organisms including mouse, rat, worm, fly, yeast, and zebrafish, making comparative analyses across these data sets substantially easier. The Alliance website currently includes the following data sets: computed orthology, phenotypes, gene ontology, associations with human diseases, wild type gene expression, alleles, and molecular interaction data. In addition, the gene pages at the Alliance web site now include computed gene descriptions for all spec ies.  In some cases, those automated gene descriptions are now being used at the individual model organism websites as well.  The Alliance website provides the research community with a consolidated view of these data and comparative genomics features.  In addition to the Alliance web site, cross-species data files are available for download, in many cases eliminating the need for downstream users to attempt consolidation of such data on their own. The data sets and user interfaces found at The Alliance will continue to expand in scope and volume as new data types are brought in. If you have questions about the Alliance, contact us at alliance - helpdesk@lists.stanford.edu.

ZIRC: New Lines Available in the Past 6 Months

The Zebrafish International Resource Center (ZIRC) serves the biomedical research community as a central genetic repository for wild-type, mutant, and transgenic lines. In the past months,several new and interesting lines and line collections have been made available to the public.

• Among these are over 90 beautiful enhancer trap lines from the Chi-Bin Chien laboratory (http://zfin.org/ZDB-PERS-960805-108), which have been submitted to ZIRC to preserve Chi-Bin’s scientific legacy. To view and order these lines, search our fish pages (http://zebrafish.org/fish/lineAll.php) for genetic features starting with the zc laboratory designation and ending with Et.
• ZIRC has also made over 70 new protein trap lines available from the Ekker lab and the International Zebrafish Protein Trap Consortium. Search our inventory for mn alleles!
• In February, we released another batch of sa alleles from the Sanger Institute’s Zebrafish Mutation Project, and we plan to release another batch of several hundred alleles in the near future.In addition, we have made many other lines available from various laboratories including calcium indicator lines (jf lines) generated on the Janelia Research Campus.

Continue browsing our website - new lines are added weekly to our inventory and made available as soon as possible. Please note that orders for most of our fish lines have 1-2 weeks turn-around time, no matter whether lines are available as embryos, adults, frozen, or frozen*.

Submitting lines to ZIRC is a voluntary process and ZIRC does not solicit line acquisitions. However, if you know of lines that you cannot find in our inventory, but think that ZIRC should have them, please contact your colleague(s) and suggest they submit their fish lines to ZIRC (http://zebrafish.org/document /strainsSubmitting.php). Thank you for your continued support of ZIRC!

Watercolors

by Spencer Katz, Penn State

Upcoming Events

European Developmental Biology Congress
October 23 - 26, 2019
Alicante, Spain

Texas Zebrafish Conference
November 1 - 2, 2019
Houston, Texas

Zebrafish Neural Circuits & Behavior
November 20 - 23, 2019
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York

9th Strategic Conference for Fish Investigators
February 4 - 8, 2020
Taipei, Taiwan

Zebrafish Husbandry Association at Aquaculture America 2020
February 9 - 12, 2020
Honolulu, Hawaii

The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC) 2020
April 22-26, 2020
National Harbor, Maryland
 

Have an idea for the newsletter or would like to contribute? Contact us at info@izfs.org! We'd love to hear from you!