Stevie Bain, final year EASTBIO PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, was invited by Springer nature group to blog on her research. Stevie works on Parental Genome Elimination (PGE), a unique type of genomic imprinting.

Her resulting blog - "Paternal genome elimination: investigating a strange reproductive strategy" - can be found here.

EASTBIO DTP PIPS administrator Dr Caroline Pope has published a paper entitled "'Work wisdom' and the PhD: Exploring the Benefits of doctoral internships" on the Vitae website's Occasional Papers series.The article draws on research data from 65 postgraduate researchers from the EASTBIO DTP programme who carried out a doctoral internship as part of their doctoral training between 2013 and 2016. The research provides their views of emerging benefits of doctoral internships to Universities, employers and society at large.

The paper can be accessed via the Vitae website (for those who have individual or institutional Vitae membership) or found here.

EASTBIO is happy to present the new Student Handbook, to be handed out to our new cohort of students and supervisors at the Induction Day (Dundee, 5 October 2017).

You can browse the contents here!

Hamish Todd, second-year EASTBIO student, presents Virus, the Beauty of the Beast - an interactive documentary on Friday, 30 June 2017 at The Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Viruses, in spite of the pain they cause us, are some of the most beautiful creatures in the world, covered in varied and intricate patterns - the patterns on Zika virus actually have connections to medieval Islamic art.

'Virus, the Beauty of the Beast' is a documentary, three years in the making, about the patterns we find in the shapes of viruses, and how understanding them can help us fight those viruses. It has a particular focus on HIV, Zika virus, and Hepatitis and, by using animation and simulation, it explores what the patterns tell us about viruses, but also what they tell us about the human designs that they appear in (buildings, golf/foot/zorbing balls, origami, gamma ray and neutrino detectors, alloys, and more).

EASTBIO successfully awarded 6 BBSRC Research Experience Placement awards to excellent undergraduate students to enable them to gain lab experience during the summer months of 2017.

More information about this year's successful projects can be found here.

The next call will be advertised in the same page no later than March 2018.

The International Society of Avian Endocrinology (ISAE) held its quadrennial conference from October 11-14 2016 at Niagara-on-the-lake in Ontario, Canada. ISAE is an event which takes place every four years in a rotation system between Asia, Europe, and America, and is dedicated to showcase up-to-date advancements in the field of avian endocrinology, while bringing together scientists from all over the world. With a combination of plenary lectures, symposia, and poster sessions, ISAE2016 is the ideal venue to meet other scientists and exchange information on a wide range of avian species. Topics discussed include, endocrinology of behaviour, endocrine disruptors, neuro-endocrine control of reproduction, feeding and metabolism, circadian rhythms and clock genes.

The British Society of Neuroendocrinology held its annual conference this year in Glasgow on the 28th-30th August.  The conference began with an ESR training workshop covering the latest scientific techniques, science communication and publishing strategies.  This was followed by a series of talks and poster presentations from students and scientists from around the world showcasing the latest pioneering research in the field of neuroendocrinology.

Two of our Eastbio DTP students, Angus Reid (University of Edinburgh) and David Walker (University of St Andrews; see photo on the right), received joint first prize for their poster presentations at the event.

A long series of thanks is due to a whole lot of people this year.

The EASTBIO team and community extends a warm thank you to the host university team - Judith and Joyce - and the student reps - Ara, Scott, Selma, Alex, Dave, Georgia - for their brilliant work designing, organising and delivering the EASTBIO Annual Symposium 2016. Their ideas, organisational skills and commitment throughtout the spring and summer terms but also on the two days of the event are largely the reason why the symposium worked so well. Thanks to our tweeting students too!

We also like to thank our guest speakers professors Luke Alphey and Nicola Clayton and artist-in-residence Clive Wilkins for their remarkable contributions to the Symposium programme.

Dave Walker, our second-year student rep has a publication out - see more here.

The paper explores the cellular signalling pathways that permit glucocorticoids and insulin to stimulate Na+ transport within cortical collecting duct cells.  The authors discovered that both glucocorticoids and insulin regulate Na+ retention via expression of serum glucocorticoid
kinase 1 (SGK1) through two distinct physiological mechanisms.

The paper has also been highlighted in a recent editorial too, here. You may recognise a reference to a certain piece of work by JRR Tolkein...

Dave, who's also helped with the organisation of the EASTBIO 2016 Symposium, twits at djw23_MOB