PRBB news

September Ellipse edition

2011-10-13T12:19:00.002+02:00

Again with a delay... I'm actually about to post the October issue! But first, take a look at the September one - I'm sure you'll find something of interest there!

Open publication - Free publishing - More alzheimer

Millions of our cells die through apoptosis every day. That’s what the group profile of Gabriel Gil (IMIM) tells us in this new issue of Ellipse. Common patterns of virus infections, common origins of genetic diseases and a more efficient cell reprogramming are other of the discoveries announced this month. You can also learn how cycling saves lives, how a simple analysis can help predict cardiovascular risk or which gene has been found to be responsible for the rare but very serious Bohring-Opitz syndrome. Also, check out the pictures of the PRBB summer party and beach volleyball championship!!

Ellipse d'estiu / Summer Ellipse

2011-09-06T15:15:00.003+02:00

Forgot to post the summer issue of Ellipse before going on holidays.. here it is!

Open publication - Free publishing - More barcelona

The Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE: UPF-CSIC) has officially joined the PRBB. Also, the CRG, another of the centres at our biomedical research park, has a new director, Luis Serrano. The ex-director Miguel Beato expresses his farewell in the editorial of this month's El•lipse. Other news include a new drug against hepatitis C, the deciphering of the chronic lymphocytic leukaemia genome, the role of CB1 receptors in learning and advances in drug design thanks to computer simulations. Enjoy!

Weekly meetings for runners

2011-06-20T12:30:00.002+02:00

After the success of the "5 years 5 km" initiative last May 30, many of the runners of the PRBB decided they didn´t have enough. So now four weekly meetings have been scheduled for anyone who wants to go for a run with some colleagues.

Every Monday at 6pm and at 7pm
Every Thursday at 6pm and at 7pm

The starting point is the inner square, where "runners" can meet and warm up.

Thanks to all who participated on May 30, and let's keep on running!!!

New edition of El·lipse, June 2011: "Five years, five kilometres"

2011-06-08T12:48:00.002+02:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More award

In the June issue of the Ellipse, the monthly newspaper of the PRBB, you can learn how about 100 residents of the PRBB met to run 5km to celebrate 5 years since the park creation. In addition, Toni Gabaldón, from the CRG, explains his research in comparative genomics; UPF researchers publish in Science the relationship between DNA compaction and the stress cell response; several studies from the IMIM help the benefits of olive oil to be recognized by the European Food Safety Authority; Audrey de Nazelle, from CREAL, reveals the utility of smartphones for epidemiological studies; and scientists from the CMRB show how the LSD1 enzyme helps stem cells to decide between renewal or differentiation. You can also discover who has won the PRBB award or how statistics can support research, among many other things. Enjoy it!

Premi Ellipse sobre la biologia de la memoria

2011-05-24T18:31:00.005+02:00

Recordad, ya podeis enviar vuestros trabajos (escritos o gràficos) para participar en el premio Ellipse. La única condición es que traten sobre la biologia de la memoria. Estan en juego 1000 euros!

Ànimos!

Mas información aquí:
http://bit.ly/hEhQkF

New Ellipse edition (May 2011)

2011-05-10T11:13:00.004+02:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More alzheimer

The PRBB celebrates its 5th anniversary! Check out what we have been up to these five years.

An EMBO workshop at the park, the largest European research project on child health or a 'scientific competition' to find the best solution to the problems of DNA assembly are other of the subjects you will find in this May edition of El•lipse, the PRBB monthly newspaper. What do the PRBB researchers think about the new Spanish Science Law?

Last but not least, you will find information on the III Ellipse Award for science popularisation. We encourage you to participate!

You can read the El·lipse here or check our multimedia version here.

El premi El·lipse del PRBB s'apropa a la biologia de la memòria | Biocat – Biociències i innovació

2011-05-02T13:21:00.000+02:00

El premi El·lipse del PRBB s'apropa a la biologia de la memòria | Biocat – Biociències i innovació

The PRBB runner's club

2011-04-19T15:59:00.001+02:00

The runner's club
Cargado originalmente por PRBB

Many of the PRBB residents go running regularly, and now we have T-shirts to identift them!

If you want to be part of the 'runner's club', come and get your T-shirt at the 4th floor!

El·lipse d'abril: El cervell, aquest gran desconegut

2011-04-08T14:39:00.001+02:00

El cervell, aquest gran desconegut, protagonitza la portada de l’edició d’abril de l’El·lipse.

Open publication - Free publishing - More barcelona

També hi trobareu articles sobre nous avenços en la nostre comprensió de l’envelliment prematur i l’infart de miocardi, sobre la predicció d’efectes secundaris de fàrmacs, la compactació de l’ADN, la regeneració de teixits i òrgans, l’origen de l’Homo sapiens, el virus de l’hepatitis C... i molt més!

L’estudi del càncer de pròstata és l’objectiu del grup de recerca que analitzem aquest mes, i en l’apartat de ‘ciència al descobert’ entendrem com funciona la citometria de flux.

En l’entrevista, David Searls, ex-vicepresident de la secció de bioinformàtica de GlaxoSmithKline ens explica com n’és d’important aquesta disciplina per les grans farmacèutiques i per la medicina del futur. I parlant de futur, quatre investigadors dels centres del PRBB imaginen quins desenvolupament tecnològic els seria útil per la seva recerca.

Desitgem que us agradi!

The biology of memory - what do YOU have to say about it for 1000€?

2011-03-31T14:37:00.003+02:00

Literature and arts get close to science for the third consecutive year with the Ellipse Award organised by the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB).

This award started three years ago by initiative of a group of young researchers of the park, and it is aimed at anyone interested in biomedical research - whatever their training and profession. It gives them the opportunity to explain a particular concept related to biomedicine using, amongst other genres, a fictional story, a poem, an essay, a theatrical script or any form of graphical work.

In the spirit of reaching as many people as possible, the texts can be written in Catalan, Spanish or English.

Under the Alzheimer International 2011 initiative, the prize this year will be awarded to the best works that address any aspect related to the biology of memory from a scientific perspective (e.g. the biochemistry of memory, its physiological conditions, the diseases that cause its alteration or the potential treatments to restore it).

The prize is 1000 Euros for the winning entry in each category: graphics and written, and the deadline for sending your work is July 15, 2011. For more information: premi-ellipse.prbb.org

Good luck!!

Cis-regulation and genome architecture during development, evolution and genetic diseases

2011-03-28T14:11:00.002+02:00

That's the title of today's PRBB-CRG conference by José Luís Gómez-Skamerta. I learned many things, but here’s two interesting ones:

1-3C (Chromosome Conformation Capture), a high-throughput molecular biology technique used to analyze the organization of chromosomes in a cell. In particular, it allows one to check whether two very distant DNA regions interact with each other via cross-linking, digestion and re-ligation. I had heard about it before, but had forgotten, and it’s quite cool, isn´t it?

2-How the 3D structure of the genome (and particularly, the formation of loops on the DNA) can add a new level of complexity to gene regulation. Gómez-Skamerta showed us how the same collection of genes and the same collection of enhancers can have a very different result through evolution (in different organisms) and through development (at different stages), and one way of achieving this is via the DNA loops. How? Using the example of the Iroquois genes (Irx), which he originally cloned, he showed how keeping two promoters (and several enhancers) within one same loop facilitated the fact that these two genes are activated by the same enhancers. It also explains why those enhancers in the loop have more difficulty to activate a gene outside the loop.

And that’s my very brief summary :)

Evolutionary medicine - understanding malaria drug resistance

2011-03-18T17:10:00.002+01:00

Forgetting for a minute their use of complicated mathematical formulae, scientists are, really, like children. They ask: why? And when they have the answer, ask again: but why? And once a satisfactory explanation has been found they wonder, but why? And on and on and on…

But this stubbornness pays off. Daniel Hartl, from Harvard University, gave us an example today of how this relentless questioning actually helps come up with interesting and useful explanations about how things are the way they are.

In his talk at the PRBB Conference Hal, Hartl talked about the evolution of drug resistance in the malaria parasite. He pointed out how the different existing treatments for malaria that have existed have been effective for less and less years each, before resistance appeared.

He focused on his analysis of DHFR, a parasite enzyme which is the target of the antimalaria drug pyrimethamine. There are 4 aa changes that can be combined following 24 potential evolutionary pathways. Hartls simulations and laboratory experiments (using E.coli) showed that only three of those account for most of the outcomes. When he checked the ‘real world’ and looked at all the polymorphisms that exist for DhFR he found that, indeed, there were few that were common, and these coincided with those he found to be more successful in the lab.

Now come the questions :)

Hartl found that a particular polymorphism very common in South East Asia (which contained all four aa changes, let’s call it 1111) was not present in Africa. Why?, he asked (especially since he found some resistant strains found in Africa had their origin in East Asia). Well, he found that the fourth mutation had a high fitness cost associated (the enzyme was less efficient), so it was not very good. ..

But then (second why) why was that mutation present in Asia to begin with? Well, because in Asia those 1111 strains had high copy numbers of a gene linked to the 1111allele which coded for the enzyme substrate, and those high copies resulted in high levels of the enzyme substrate, which meant that having a less efficient enzyme was not that bad.

But then (yes, a third one!) why was that CNV not present in Africa? Well, it turns out that while in Asia people are usually only bitten once, in Africa a person can be infected by several parasites at the same time. That means that recombination takes place between the different parasites, and therefore the CNV and the 1111 allele are easily separated. Therefore, having a 1111 is bad, and it’s not compensated by high copy numbers of the CNV, because they are not linked.

Interesting, eh? If you (or your 3-year old child) can think of any other whys don’t be shy, contact Daniel Hartl who, I am sure, will be delighted to keep on investigating…

Of sex and death

2011-03-02T12:59:00.003+01:00

Why does sex exist? And why having sex with another organism instead of oneself? These are two of the questions that Patrick Phillips, from the Unviersity of Oregon, tried to answer in his talk at the PRBB last week.

The biologist uses the nematode C.elegans for his research, which consists primarily in recreating evolution in the lab. How does that work? It basically consists of two steps: artificial selection+adaptation to the laboratory conditions. That is, he creates a novel environment, generates mutations in the worms, and sees which ones adapt and which ones die. Cruel? Not more than reality…

The advantages of these evolutionary experiments in the lab is that they are controlled and can be replicated. The problems are that they are limited in time (while real evolution takes 1000s of years) and there’s also a limited population size, which means that rare events (as in rare mutations) won’t be seen. Regardless of these inconveniences, Phillips managed to convince the audience that these experiments can prove that sex is good – to get rid of deleterious mutations and to increase genetic variation, which provides a better adaptation to the changing environment.

According to the scientist, one reason C. elegans is good for studying evolution is that they can be frozen. When you are doing the kind of experiments he does, if you freeze worms from different generations along the experiment, you have the equivalent to a ‘fossil register’ that allows you to compare the organisms at the ‘beginning’ and the ‘end’ of the evolution phase you are studying. Isn´t that cool?

Apart from sex, Phillips also talked about death – or why we age. Again, the elegans nematode plays an important role in ageing research: actually some mutants can live up to 10 times their usual lifespan. That is the equivalent of a human living 1000 years!

His experiment consisted in breading the worms for 323 generations by selecting only one worm in each generation to spread the population. As a consequence, the population size went dooooown and the worms were very sick (ah, the lack of genetic variation!). He then, playing God, saved the species by letting a higher number of worms reproduce for another 60 generations. When he compared the genome of the sick (thanks to his ‘fossil record’) and the recovered worms he found very few changes: only about 10 nucleotides! He went back in history to check when each change had taken place – again, thanks to the frozen worms (amazing, eh?). What he found is that the ‘recovery’ mutations were not the result of ‘mutating back’ to the original sequence, but rather they were compensatory mutations.

All in all, he showed us what he called an ‘emerging paradigm in evolutionary biology’, a new way of studying evolution: create a perturbation (mutation); propagate the species for 50-100 generations to let them recover fitness; sequence the genome to find out which changes have occurred; use genetics to confirm the results.

Voilà! Now you can try it at home :)

February issue of El.lipse - new format!

2011-02-14T22:10:00.002+01:00

New issue of El.lipse, and new look - check it out!!!!

Open publication - Free publishing - More barcelona

Life at its physical limits

2011-01-31T17:48:00.003+01:00

“What cannot be measured properly, is not science”, sentences Matthieu Louis when he introduces William Bialek’s talk at the PRBB. There’s a packed room of close to 100 people, many of them left standing, others sitting on the floor.

There’s always a silence, longer than average, before Bill answers any question directed to him. You are left to wonder whether he has heard you. But he has. It’s just that, unlike many people, he actually thinks before he speaks.

And he obviously knows he’s talking about complex issues, too complex for the average human brain to grasp easily (not that the brains in this room are average, though). So his discourse is slow-paced, as if there’s a conscious thought before every single word he says. He stops and looks at the ceiling while reflecting, takes his glasses out and runs his hand through his face and dense beard before continuing.

With a green pen he writes formulae on a whiteboard with as easy a flow as if he was using words. Mathematics is his language and he thinks, as did Galileo Galilei, that it is also the language in which Nature is written.

He starts his talk with a Calvin and Hobbes Cartoon (one of his favourites) about how mathematics allow us to make predictions about the way things work, and throughout the seminar he gives some sharp and crisp examples of ‘life at its best’, i.e. of how Nature gets very close to its physical limits, such as the workings of the compound eye of a fly.

“The default assumption that evolution is sloppy and imprecise is probably not fair”, concludes the physicist from Princeton University. He leaves us with a question: are all these examples of optimization of information transmission just independent cases or can they all be connected to a general theory? Here’s some food for thought.

New Ellipse edition (January 2011)

2011-01-18T16:09:00.003+01:00

Should scientist publish their negative results? Four researchers from the PRBB centres give their opinion in the latest Ellipse’s debate.

In this issue you can also find more about the PRBB Intervals programme, which offers free workshops for interdisciplinary learning and reflection for scientists at the PRBB centres and celebrates its 3rd anniversary.

How scientists have created a living computer system, how benign tumors can help understand malign cancers, or how researchers have found out there was (female) contact between America and Europe before Columbus are only some more of the things you can read here!

New Ellipse, December edition!

2010-12-15T10:29:00.004+01:00

The new edition of the PRBB newspaper, El·lipse, is out.

Find out which 50 countries do the PRBB residents come from, what has Patarroyo to say about his new malaria vaccine, how some scientists found the blood from Louis XVI or a new therapeutic option to combat obesity. Also, in the current-affairs debate, 5 researchers tell us about what they think will be the scientific breakthroughs for the next decade.

Do not miss it!

How to get your research published in the Financial Times

2010-12-01T23:15:00.002+01:00

Today I attended a course for Press Officers on how to improve our communication style, specifically when writing press releases. The objective: to get coverage of our research in the international press.

The course was organized by AlphaGalileo and CERCA (the Catalan network of research centers), and the tutor was Myc Riggulsford. He was great, very insightful, and the workshop was fun and interesting. I learned plenty of things, but will write here just a few of the most important tips:

- The first 25 words is all most journalist will get to read from the press release: make them sexy enough, and make sure all the basic info (what, who, why, when, where, who) is in the 1st paragraph
- Make short sentences (less than 25 words) and short words (less than 7 letters)
- Simplify (a lot!) the language. A 9 to 12 year-old reader should be able to understand everything you write (ejem… wishful thinking!!)
- Avoid jargon (and my definition of what is considered jargon has been greatly expanded today!), acronyms, words in capital letters.
- Give examples
- Tell stories
- Use words of which people can make a mental image
- Use quotes (to make it more personal, not impersonal)
- Use active language, not passive
- Use short titles (less than one line) with sexy words on it
- Make sure all the info is in the text (repeat what’s said in the title/subheadings, since they might be separated from the main text)
- Repeat key words (don’t be ashamed of using the same word over and over; it helps people to follow what you are saying)
- Think of the timing when you send the press release: there’s times of the year (summer, Xmas) when it’s easier to get published
- Think where to target your press release: perhaps you might be able to have it in the business section!

There were many more, but I’ll leave it there for now. Let’s see if some of these get put into practice!!

Comunicar Ciencia en Red (1)

2010-11-27T00:24:00.005+01:00

Este jueves y viernes (25 y 26 de noviembre) hemos estado en la conferencia ComCiRed en Valencia. He aquí un ‘executive summary’. Perdonad por la falta de algunos acentos...

La conferencia inaugural de Carlos Elias (UCIIIM) nos la saltamos porque el tren llego con retraso :(

Cesar Lopez (FECYT) comento los resultados de la Encuesta Percepción social de la ciencia 2010. Aquí algunos datos interesantes:
- parece que el interés por la ciencia y la tecnología ha aumentado (9,6 a 13,1% en últimos 2 años). Aunque seguramente el valor real de estas encuestas era limitado (la mayoría de la gente miente cuando se le pregunta si prefiere ver un documental científico o un programa del corazón…!)
- el 60% ven más beneficios que perjuicios en la ciencia
- los científicos son el tipo de profesional mejor vistos por los encuestados (junto con los médicos), y la ciencia es una de las áreas en las que se debería invertir más – de nuevo, habría que ver si la gente ha sido sincera…
- la TV es todavía el medio más usado para informarse sobre ciencia (80%), aunque internet se ha duplicado en los últimos años, y sigue creciendo, sobretodo en la población joven (menor de 34). De hecho casi el 70% de los encuestados creen que internet es el único medio que ofrece ‘suficiente’ información científica.

Gonzalo Remiro (tambien FECYT), como punto nacional de contacto del VII Programa Marco de la UE, explicó un poco las áreas que cubre el programa de “Science in Society” y que tipo de proyectos entrarían, y Gemma Revuelta (OCC-UPF) nos contó su experiencia de participación y/o liderazgo en varios de estos proyectos, como eknownet o escity.

Laura Corcuera nos recordó que la plataforma SINC, en la que trabajan 8 periodistas y en la que están registrados más de 500 periodistas, es una de nuestras mejores aliadas a la hora de divulgar los resultados científicos, y nos paso algunos datos de una reciente encuesta sobre el uso que se hace de SINC.

La última conferencia fue del consultor Marc Cortes (RocaSalvatella), quien dió una charla de lo más interesante sobre las herramientas web 2.0, redes sociales, etc. Nada (o no mucho) que no supiéramos o que no fuera lógico, pero que expuso de forma muy clara. Algunas de las ideas claves para mí:

- Lo que se dice de ti en internet, es parte de tu identidad. Importante monitorear que se dice de ti en la web, que dicen tus ‘usuarios’ (o publico objetivo)
- Las páginas web corporativas se visitan cada vez menos. La gente esta más interesada en lo que dicen otros usuarios que en lo que dice la empresa
- Internet es transparente: por eso es esencial ser honesto
- Hay que contarle a la gente lo que quiere oir cuando lo quiere oir. Hay que ir a buscar a tu publico objetivo (e.g. en redes sociales de intereses específicos)

En definitiva, para una buena estrategia de web 2.0 hay que:
1)-identificar tu publico objetivo, saber cuál es su índice de digitalización, donde se mueven, que les interesa. Analizar tu entorno (quien hace que donde).
2)-definir tus objetivos, escoger unos indicadores, diseñar tu plan de acción - que quieres generar y donde (en grupos propios o ajenos?)
3)-revisar tus resultados.

Aparte de todas estas conferencias, hubo los grupos de trabajo de las UCC+i (Unidades de comunicación científica e innovación), que fueron quizás la parte más fructífera de las jornadas. Entre otras cosas, se decidieron algunos pasos para asegurar una mayor colaboración entre las diferentes UCCs de España, se concreto mejor lo que define a una UCC (muchas son departamentos de comunicación de centros de investigación, pero hay otros formatos) y se comentaron cosas a mejorar en la comunicación de los resultados de la investigación y la divulgación de la ciencia en general.

Comcired

2010-11-23T23:30:00.002+01:00

In a couple of days we are going to the Comcired meeting in Valencia to meet with people from other UCC (scientific communication units, or something of the sort) from all over Spain. I think some interesting ideas and projects might come up from this... will try to post them when we are back!

November edition of El·lipse now out!

2010-11-10T13:37:00.002+01:00

From today, the November edition of the PRBB newspaper, El.lipse, a monthly bilingual publication, is available. To download a PDF version please click here.

To see all the issues of El·lipse click here.

Success of Open Day

2010-11-02T11:33:00.002+01:00

The initiative set in motion by Science Meets Society in 2008 continues. The third Open Day attracted a very diverse, motivated and interested public to the Charles Darwin square and the PRBB building.

The public queued patiently to get into the multimedia installations and to sign up to guided tours. Meanwhile, the volunteers were rushed off their feet dealing with questions, drawing up lists for tours or doing experiments and playing games with the children. The inside of the building was a hive of activity with groups of the public, accompanied by guides, following routes during which researchers explained how their labs work, their research projects or how to use a piece of equipment.

Upon realising that all these people were volunteers, one attendee said to us “I’m jealous, people who work here seem so excited and happy about their work”, and the truth is that, at the end of the day, we volunteers were exhausted but very pleased. And for good reason, according to the data: the approximate number of attendees was 3850, of which 2090 visited the building. 2300 participated in the experiments and activities: 672 in the multimedia facilities, 150 in the scientific cafe and 90 in the reading corner.

All of this was only possible thanks to the 181 volunteers from the PRBB centres. Many thanks to all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Check out some pics of the day in our flickr account!

European Science Journalists at the PRBB

2010-11-02T11:08:00.003+01:00

A group of science journalists from the European Union of Science Journalists Associations (EUSJA) visited the PRBB last Wednesday October 27. They came from Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

During a couple of hours the journalists visited the building and some of the facilities, like the CRG advanced microscopy unit, presented by Timo Zimmerman. They also had a chance to talk to some researchers, such as en Manolis Kogevinas (CREAL), Anna Bigas (IMIM) or Maria José Barrero (CMRB) about the research taking place in their centres.

The group of journalists were accompanied by representatives of the University ofGirona and of the Catalan Association of Scientific Communication (ACCC), who hosted them. During their 3-day "Study Trip" in Catalonia, the EUSJA journalists sisited several research institutions in Girona and Barcelona.

Jornada de Portes Obertes al PRBB - Us esperem el 2 d'octubre!

2010-09-11T00:10:00.002+02:00

Jornada de portes obertes al PRBB “Diversitat genètica: iguals i diferents”
2 d'octubre de 2010

Com cada any, el primer dissabte d'octubre, el PRBB obre les seves portes al públic i organitza diverses i interessants activitats relacionades amb la ciència i la biomedicina. Uns 150 voluntaris, entre investigadors i personal de gestió hi dediquen el dia. L'objectiu és establir un contacte directe entre científics i ciutadans. El públic pot accedir a una gran instal•lació de la ciutat i parlar directament amb els experts de tot allò que l'interessa. D'altra banda el científic es posa a prova explicant conceptes complexos amb un llenguatge entenedor i mostrant quina és la seva feina, perquè serveix, quins equips necessita per dur-la a terme, etc.

Les jornades tenen sempre un eix central. Així, l'edició de 2009 va estar dedicada a la figura de Charles Darwin, aprofitant que se celebrava el 150 aniversari de la teoria de l'evolució. Va tenir molt bona acollida doncs van participar unes 3500 persones.

Aquest any la celebració de l'Any Internacional de la Biodiversitat i l'Any Internacional de l'Apropament de les Cultures, ens permet parlar de diversitat genètica i com som d'iguals i alhora com som de diferents els humans.

Es podrà participar en exposicions multimèdia interactives realitzades en col•laboració amb el centre HANGAR, centre per a la producció i investigació artística de l'Associació d'Artistes Visuals de Catalunya (AAVC). En aquest sentit s'ha fet un treball conjunt d'investigadors i artistes, per tal d'obtenir productes multimèdia avançats molt atractius pel públic i elaborats amb criteris didàctics i divulgatius. La "captura" de rostres utilitzant la tècnica dels microarrays, un joc de diversitat amb realitat augmentada i una composició musical utilitzant la diversitat de presències, son les propostes que es presenten.

A la plaça Charles Darwin, just davant de l'edifici del PRBB hi haurà tallers i experiments per a tots els públics i sobre tot per a nens i nenes. També es realitzaran visites guiades a l'edifici i als laboratoris.

Hi haurà també un espai de llibre infantil, el racó del lector, amb interpretacions de conta-contes, a càrrec de la Companyia de teatre PeRaBaBaus. Disposarem d'una sala per a visualitzar vídeos científics i a la tarda es farà un cafè científic al voltant de la medicina personalitzada.

Es lliurarà també el II Premi El•lipse de divulgació científica, i hi hauran actuacions de la coral del PRBB.

Tot això en un ambient festiu, i amb una batucada final a càrrec del grup The Band Sambant.

RESUM

Tema: Jornada de Portes Obertes del PRBB.
Diversitat genètica: iguals i diferents
Data: Dissabte 2 d'octubre de 2010
Inici: 10h
Final: 20h
Preu: Gratuït
Lloc: Parc de Recerca Biomèdica de Barcelona (PRBB)
Adreça: Plaça Charles Darwin / Doctor Aiguader 88, 08003 Barcelona
Web: www.prbb.org/openday
Email: comunicacio@prbb.org
Tel: 93 316 0000
Càtering: Servei de bar i entrepans

PROGRAMA
10.00 -18.00 h
Tallers i experiments
Amb senzills experiments et divertiràs fent ciència!
Fes polseres amb codis genètics. Troba el missatge que s'amaga en una seqüència d'ADN. Aprèn com funciona l'herència genètica. Fabrica ADN amb "xuxes". Enduu-te a casa l'ADN del kiwi. Observa pel microscopi...

Visites guiades als laboratoris
Coneixes per dins l'edifici del PRBB?
Has vist mai una proteïna o la seqüència d'un gen? Segueix-nos a través dels passadissos i laboratoris , de la mà dels investigadors del PRBB que et mostraran i t'explicaran quina és la seva feina.
Cal inscriure's el mateix dia. Els grups s'organitzaran per ordre d'arribada.

Exposició multimèdia interactiva (HANGAR)

Realitat augmentada.
Crea la teva pròpia "criatura" i acompanya-la en les seves emocionants aventures. La diversitat genètica serà l'eix del joc i entendràs quin paper tenen les diferències genètiques en la supervivència de les espècies.

Microarrays de rostres diferents.
Cada cara és diferent. Això és pot representar utilitzant la tecnologia dels microarrays i comprovar quines són aquestes diferències.

Instal•lació sonora amb càmera visió.
"Som iguals, som diferents". Aquesta frase, gravada en 30 idiomes diferents i 30 veus diferents es converteix en música i el moviment de les persones a la Plaça Darwin intervé en la simfonia. Pots formar part de l'orquestra!

Video Room
La diversitat genètica en imatges!
Relaxa't i gaudeix de documentals per a totes les edats, triats pels joves científics del PRBB.

Racó del lector i conte contes
Ciència per llegir, diversitat per escoltar.
Gaudeix d'un espai de lectura amb llibres de ciència per a totes les edats, cedits per la Biblioteca Sagrada Família. De tant en tant hi ha algú que fa de conta-contes, o uns actors interrompen la lectura per fer-nos gaudir d'alguna activitat teatral. I és que al PRBB comptem amb el grup de teatre PeRaBaBaus ..

17.00 h
II Premi El•lipse de divulgació científica

El tema d'enguany ha estat la diversitat genètica humana: obra escrita i obra gràfica. Es farà el lliurament de premis d'aquesta segona edició.

18.00 h
Cafè científic

Diversitat genètica i medicina personalitzada.
La genètica té totes les respostes? Fins a on la genètica millorarà la nostra salut? Podem preveure-ho tot? Parlarem de tot això prenent un cafè amb pastes.

Durant tot el dia hi haurà servei de bar.

Open Day at the PRBB - October 2, 2010!!!

2010-09-11T00:07:00.003+02:00

The date is October 2, and the place is the PRBB. Don't miss it! You will be able to learn about human genetic diversity with interactive multimedia exhibitions, experiments, a scientific cafe, etc. As usual, you will also be able to visit the labs and talk to the scientists. All in a festive environment.

See you there!

more info: http://www.prbb.org/openday

Beach volley party at PRBB

2010-08-14T00:02:00.002+02:00

Hi!

I wasn't there (off on maternity leave at the moment! - that's why I haven't been writing much...) but here you can check some pics and a video of the PRBB beach volley championship party - looks it was fun!

II El·lipse Award for Science Popularization - it's now open!

2010-03-24T10:44:00.001+01:00

For the second consecutive year, the PRBB organizes the El·lipse Award for Science Popularization which aims to promote life sciences popularization.
As it was done in the first edition, the works should be focused on a specific aspect of biomedicine, which this year will be Human genetic diversity.

The award is open to any person over 18, regardless of their training, although it will assess the scientific rigor of the work.

Works can be submitted in Catalan, Spanish or English and in one of two categories:
a)Written works b) Graphic works

The deadline ends on July 15, and the prize is €1000 for each category.

So if you feel like participating, start now! Good luck!
For more information please see: www.prbb.org/premiellipse.

You can now follow us from twitter, too!

2010-03-19T12:55:00.004+01:00

You can follow news from the PRBB and from this blog, as well as watch cool videos from the PRBB or its centres, from twitter. Just check us out at
http://twitter.com/the_prbb

The interview (premi ellipse)

2010-03-17T19:10:00.004+01:00

Here's another of the winners (well, a runner-up for the written works) of the El·lipse Award. It was written in English orginally by Joana Domingues Ribeiro.

Born in Lisbon in the 1st of November 1980, Joana has a degree in Microbian Biology and Genetics, and since 2005 she is a student of the GABBA PhD program, at the university of Oporto, Portugal. In 2006 she joined the CRG, one of the centres at the PRBB, and currently she is doing her PhD at the laboratory of Luciano Di Croce, in the field of Epigenetics and Chromatin. Last summer she did a short workshop on creative writing and since then she is testing new language tools and developing new ideas to experience the scientific world and herself.

Hope you enjoy it!

THE FIRST INTERVIEW

Looking forward to shave some heads, he laid the nervous scissors when suddenly the bell rang. It was the last client of that feminine suffocating night of summer. Faster than a train, a dancer perfume flooded the little hair salon, crossed one of his sighs, and sat in the destiny chair. The request was easy and followed a simple mathematic equation, a short and round fringe and a slight adjustment in the length. What really was impossible was to forget her. Her face was like a soft light that could put him to sleep, the long hair invented a thousand drawings, and the sweet mouth threatened the singing of his favourite song.

Farewell came when his skeletal pale moon hand found her hand, warm and vibrating and he could notice her excitation for the new haircut including some rush to flaunt it. Afterwards not even the luscious liquor could calm him down when his dangerous eyes were chasing, from a remote third floor, the last steps of the mysterious client disappearing happily in the corner of the night. The most beautiful being of the last five hundred years had left his salon and entered his heart. He mechanically washed the small bat face and stilled the weak body that inside was noisy as a Carnival timbrel. Then he closed the daily hairsalon and like a Christmas illumination dazzled the entire subway on the way back home.

At the house entrance Igor, the cat, would wait for him, hungry for tenderness. A subtle hairspray smell dispersed the feline and he took opportunity to conquer his favourite chair half destroyed by the cat’s tedious claws. Several chaotic diplomas in the front wall teletransported him to the past.

His six false identities have allowed him the most diverse jobs in the last five centuries. He started as a pastry cook at the court of king Louis the XIV, and then he travelled to South America and established one-man show at the city of Buenos Aires. In unknown year he accepted a position as a dealer of books and wigs and latter, back to Europe, he attended several university night classes. Nowadays he was a manager of a karaoke bar and a hair salon. However his infinite secret would chase him like the smell of coffin. He was a vampire and since that night he was madly in love with no bite intentions.

Not attractively dark or young looking as count Dracula, he had never hypnotized the victims with gothic chaos. His extremely bad luck dictated that he would be bitten at the age of sixty two.

But how could he, Bruno of Drac, invite that mysterious woman for a duo at his karaoke bar? A grandpa singing “Forever Young” from Alphaville would never interest her. Meanwhile he used the internet and googled “How to become young in one week”. The results redirected him to a myriad of homemade rejuvenation receipts, talismans, hair tonics, medicinal spas, illegal witches, auto-help manuals, and immense authentic virtual maize.

In the last second of despair, mental neons lighted on reading, “American Scientists discovered in induced pluripotent cells the source of eternal youth”. The following words excited him more than a paparazzi shooting a new scandal. Rejuvenation was possible, he scream inside himself like a shrilling megaphone of youth. After two days he flew to the distant California.

Disguised as a journalist, he could enter the building where the American scientists worked, managing an exclusive hour interview with the group leader that had made the amazing discovery.

Surrounded by a hypnotizing white colour he was carried to an unknown dimension. He observed machines working advanced units, and fellows in scientific uniform manipulating invisible ideas. Strangely that underground world of mystery and possibilities mirrored his one. A loud voice coming from the end of an aseptic corridor woke him. A waiting fellow without a lab coat and gloves invited him for a coffee without even questioning why he was wearing sunglasses. This was how he met Dr.W., famous group leader and his first interview experience.

He had prepared the essential questions which together with a small notebook and pocket voice recorder added credibility to his true scientific curiosity. Accepting a hot nervous coffee he stirred the sugar with the first question,

-Dr.W. the international press acclaims you as the father of regenerative medicine but is this in fact revolution?

-Mr. of Drac, you and your fellow journalist have to understand that we are only at the beginning of a process. We could call it revolution if all scientific knowledge would have direct medical applications. Our mission is to unravel the entire potential of stem cells.

-But what exactly are these mysterious stem cells? Where do they come from? And, is it possible to buy them through internet?

-The stem cells are undifferentiated cells that give rise to all kind of cells that you can find in our organs and tissues. All human beings have stem cells so this is something that brings us together. Stem cells can be found in the fertilized egg and in some tissues of the fetal and adult body. Of course they are not for sale and not available for non scientific manipulation.

-But I have heard that your group developed a special kind of reprogrammed cells. Is that right?

-Dear Mr. of Drac we work with a particular kind of stem cells, so called induced pluripotent cells. These are special since they come from a specialized cell, such as a skin cell. What others and we did was to reprogram them to an undifferentiated status similar to that of embryonic stem cells. These latter ones are pluripotents that means that in certain conditions they can give rise to any kind of cell in the body.

-Does that mean that this biological material you expect to sell human youth?

-Mr.of Drac our laboratory is not interested in any kind of commercial profit. For you to have an idea, last week multimillionaire from Plastic Surgery Company proposed us a million dollar business in exchange for knowledge that does not even exist. If Mr. of Drac also wishes any kind of business with us you would better go away right now.

-Dr. W., please relax, I didn’t come to interview you with any commercial interest. I am just curious to know if, in this moment it is possible to convert a man with of age into a young man of age thirty years.

-Very well, I tell you that miracle is impossible right now. You and the general audience have to understand exactly what we are dealing with before drawing such false conclusions. I dislike seeing the work of my team considered a commonplace. What we want is to know if the induced cells can give raise to all kind of specialized cells and what are the conditions for that to occur. Hopefully with this we would be able to repair the function of certain organs or human tissues.

-But meanwhile what are the fruits of your research?

-Mr. of Drac, you cannot really see the art of our research! Our work is interconnected with the one from other researchers that use embryonic or adult stem cells as a model. With all common knowledge, we wish to understand how organisms grow and how the human body keeps on its organs and tissues during life. Only in this way we can understand what occurs in case of disease.

-At the end, Dr. W., don’t you think that there is so much publicity and so little clinical application!

- Please don’t despise all that my team and colleagues achieved. The more we can know about our model the closer we will be to clinical applications. We hope one day to be able to cure pathologies such as cardiac and liver diseases and some advanced cancers. Don’t you think that’s better than aspirin?

Bruno just wanted to bite the middle age man, full of impossible, sit at his front. That was catastrophe. His body trembled and the mouth got dry as a desert. Without even saying goodbye he evaporated from the room and diluted himself in the crowed streets. Finally at home not even Igor the cat could, with its furniture destruction power, wake him from a necrotic sleep walker state. Unexpectedly in a full moon night, a scream of joy disturbed the sleeping kitten. It was not Halloween night but somehow the vampire woke up in a good mood. Some days after the hair salon and karaoke bar were sold and the old vampire changed town and looked for a new life as a scientific researcher. The fake interview opened in him an extreme curiosity for science and stem cell research. He will take part on the biggest discoveries and have all eternity to look for the therapy of the lost youth.

¡Nieva en el PRBB!

2010-03-09T19:43:00.001+01:00

¡Nieva en el PRBB!
Cargado originalmente por okokitsme

Yesterday it snowed in Barcelona, something unheard of (at least for long years!!!). The city was unrecognizable, and there were plenty of opportunities to take cool pictures of the PRBB in snow.

There's even a funny video made by one of the residents showing how scientists have fun with snowballs...

We all had to go back home early to make sure we didn't get stuck in the building - it was that bad! But also beautiful and special.

Totipotent (premi ellipse) - ENGLISH

2010-03-03T12:14:00.000+01:00

And here's the English version of the same comic, the graphic category winner of the 1st Ellipse award of the PRBB. Hope you enjoy it!

Totipotent (premi ellipse) - CATALÀ

2010-03-03T12:08:00.003+01:00

Aquest és el guanyador del premi ellipse categoria gràfica. L'autor és n'Ignasi Buch, que treballa aquí al PRBB, al GRIB.

Que el gaudiu!

"Once upon a time there was a cell" (premi El·lipse)

2010-02-16T14:05:00.005+01:00

As you may remember in a previous post I copied the text that won the "El·lipse award", organised by the PRBB last year for the first time. Here you can find one of the runner-ups, "Once upon a time there was a cell"

David Mateos, 2nd honourable mention from El·lipse Prize of
Scientific Dissemination, in the category of written work

Once upon a time there was a cell

Once upon a time there was a cell that was torn between two conflicting destinations. Unlike most of the cells who had but just one marked destiny (to turn into a liver cell, a red blood cell or even into one of those cells inside the nose, the ones having a hair growing from them), this cell had many possibilities. It lived in the spinal cord and, depending on how it would decide to divide itself it could turn into a red blood cell, into a platelet or into a cell of the immune system. And even if it didn't want to turn into any specific cellular type, it could continue dividing itself eternally, maintaining its undifferentiated state. This capacity to give raise to so many different cells made it earn the nickname of ‘stem cell’.

But the pluri-potency didn't make our cell happy. It was tired of dividing itself constantly without knowing what cellular type to rise to, but on the other hand, it didn't quite understand the differences amongst the different type of blood cells that potentially existed in it. “The platelets have a great importance in the blood clotting", it recited in memory from something it had read on wikicell when the body it now lived in was just an embryo and all the cells received the necessary training for their future.

But how to choose that destiny in a permanent way, giving up all the other open doors, without ever having been a platelet and without really understanding what that new life meant in its day to day? It often tried to ask some of the platelets nearby, but these were very shy and didn't dare talk to stem cells for which they felt great respect. It also got no answer from the red blood cells, who felt certain envy towards its capacities.

One day, exhausted due to so much indecision, our stem cell decided to donate her body to science, believing that this way her fate would be sealed forever. What was her surprise when seeing that, once outside the body and already in its new home, a very comfortable Petri dish, its possible destinies were even bigger, infinite in fact!

In hands of the researchers, the cell learned that it couldn't just differentiate into all cellular types it could have given raise in the body, but that with the adequate nutrients the scientists provided it with, it could also turn into cell types it would have never even dreamed of… “I could become an eye cell and see incredible landscapes", the cell imagined. "Although being a sperm would also be funny", it smiled to itself. It didn't matter anymore what it would become, it wasn't only pluri-potent now, but all-potent, it could be anything. It would seem that this wide range of options should scare our tiny cell even more but, ironically, its new situation freed it. It knew that, whatever its future was it would be the scientist's decision and that its life had a meaning that went far beyond itself, that it could give life, cure patients. It thought that its name, ‘stem cell’, would never again just only be a nickname that it disliked and made it feel different to the others, but a name pronounced with affection by humans it would help, a name that made it feel special, privileged.

The cell closed its pores and breathed happily.

Celulón

Mercadillo per Haití en el PRBB (II) en Flickr: ¡Intercambio de fotos!

2010-02-12T14:50:00.001+01:00

You can check some more photos of the flea market in the PRBB group of Flickr:

Mercadillo per Haití en el PRBB (II) en Flickr: ¡Intercambio de fotos!

With love from the PRBB...2500€ for Haiti !!

2010-02-12T13:43:00.002+01:00

The campaign to collect money for Haiti has been a success. 51 volunteers participated in the campaign, from cake confectioners and breakfast and flea market sellers.

The three-day breakfasts on the terrace, on February 8, 9 and 10, exhibited a large collection of excellent homemade cakes made by residents at the PRBB. The cakes were delicious and many people asked for the recipes - we might paste some here later on!!

The activities on Thursday 11 worked very well, despite the cold. Due to the intense wind the Flea Market was finally set inside the big local on the inner square (instead of at the square, around the trees, which would have been nice... but impossible on that day!). You could buy a great number and diversity of articles for symbolic prices (from 1€ or less you could get great clothes, a washing machine (well, that was for more, but about 15 or 20 at the most, I think - probably the most expensive item in the whole market!), a DVD player, small furniture, lamps, books, jewellery, kitchen utensils , etc.

The free hot chocolate that Soteras (the company that runs the restaurant) provided, together with the croissants and ‘melindros’ (cookies), helped soothe the cold of both sellers and buyers.

A total of € 2520 was collected, which will be donated entirely to the Emergency Fund of Doctors Without Borders.

Solidarity at PRBB: Haiti II

2010-02-10T11:45:00.003+01:00

And so the third day of "Solidarity breakfasts" has gone, and we have collected more than 1600 euros!! It has been a great success, with many volunteers bringing cakes and even more people eating them :)

Thanks to everyone who participated, and don't forget we have the 'flea market' tomorrow, which is open to everyone - again, the PRBB residents have been very generous and there are hundreds of objects waiting for a good home.... don't miss it!

Receptes pastissos solidaris/Solidarity cakes recipes

2010-02-09T10:44:00.005+01:00

Al PRBB sembla que tenim molts afeccionats a la pastisseria. Els esmorzars solidaris han tret a la llum veritables mestres pastissers i tothom demana les receptes.

En aquest blog podreu compartir les vostres receptes. Si a més pots afegir una foto, millor encara.

Solidarity at PRBB: Haiti

2010-02-04T18:36:00.003+01:00

A group of PRBB residents is organising a campaign in aid of the earthquake victims in Haiti. A popular breakfast at the terrace, a "flea market" and a popular hot chocolate session are some of the actions that will take place on February 8 and 11. All money collected will be given to Médicins Sans Frontières. I'll send an update and some pics next week!

The PRBB at Flickr

2010-01-28T16:52:00.003+01:00

Hi there!

There is now a PRBB group in flickr where you can see lots of nice pictures of the PRBB: both of the amazing building and of the many and varied activities that take place here: the beach volley championship, the Open Day, the plays by the theater company PeRaBaBaus, etc.

Here you can see a slideshow of the picutres. Enjoy!

Created with flickr slideshow.

New format of Cell papers - cool!

2010-01-22T10:33:00.002+01:00

Today I’ve learned many interesting things. One of them is that Cell has launched this year a new format for the papers they publish, and it looks great! I’ve only had a very quick look at it, but it’s basically much easier to navigate, to inter-relate the different sections, etc.

You can see a video-explanation of how it works here.

And this is how the papers look like:

Some of the new features are:
- There are different tabs for each section (summary, results, etc) and you can move easily from one to the other
- The summary includes a ‘graphical abstract’ and in some cases there’s also a video-interview with the authors
- You can show or hide the affiliations, and when you click on one of them, the names of the authors affiliated to that centre is highlighted, so you don’t have to look at the million tiny symbols you had to do before
- You can see the thumbnails of all the figures, to have an overview, and then click on each of them to see them bigger, with their caption, as usual, but also with links to the places in the paper that refer to that figure!!
- This cross-reference system also works for the references. You can go to each reference and ask where in the paper it is mentioned, and it goes there directly. You can also organise references by author, or year, etc. It also gives you an idea of how these references have been cited in other publications (from Scope)

All in all, a great initiative, I think it will be a real success, and hope others follow suit!

Letter to a young scientist

2010-01-21T11:32:00.003+01:00

This is the title of the text that won the "El·lipse award", organised by the PRBB last year for the first time. I already mentioned the El·lipse awards in an earlier post, but we now have the English translation of the winner (written category) - courtesy of Global Talent, so I thought it would be worth posting it heres, so more people can enjoy it!

So, here it is:

Marga Nadal, 1st El·lipse prize of Scientific Dissemination,
in the category of written work

"Letter to a young scientist"

Dear lady,

I received your mail a few days ago and have had it marked with one of those flags until now when I have found a moment of inspiration to answer you. You ask me if research on stem cells will have such an impact as those who understand it foresee, and my immediate response would be no. Even as we scientists have always been proud of being at the margin of fashions, one only needs to have a look at the most prestigious publications of the latest years and one will realize that it is absolutely not true. Scientists and the media who are minimally aware of what we do, have become experts in generating great social expectations and many of us have continued the onslaughts of these gales. Just think for a moment where genetic therapy had to take us and where it has finally taken us. I wouldn't, in any way, want to sin by being pessimistic and I wouldn't want to make you lose this enthusiasm that you have timidly shown towards research, but I would like you to understand that science is still far from being able of resolving all the imperfections of nature. Stem cells, as you know, are the branch parts for excellence, our pantry; their potential to become any cell is absolute at least in the embryonic stage, the very first ones.

The reasoning is therefore simple: if the liver needs a spare liver we only need the stem cells to become liver; if we need neurons, we transform them into neurons and this way, ad líbitum, without limitations. But what needs to be understood is, as always, the mechanism of this metamorphosis. For you to better understand it, if you have never walked along Chillida Leku, you will realize that the sculptures are all different, made of different materials, forms and dimensions and independently of whether you like them or not, they all come from a stone block, of granite, basalt, even of iron or whatever, but the author's imprint is unmistakable.

So, stem cells are the stone block which can be turned into a sculpture, any sculpture, the lining of the scale of the steps at home or simply, remain forever at the quarry. Man or artist is the one who, with his need or expertise, will transform the stone into slab or sculpture. But the stone also transforms by itself: put a stone or sandstone, polished or natural, shiny and white in your house and you will see how it initially will be the envy of neighbours and maybe even someone would want to publish it in a decoration magazine, but you will also see, as just some little time later the stone will have aged, well or badly, but it will have aged, by itself. And the ageing will be different according to whether it has been a humid winter or an especially dry summer, initially very unpredictable, of course.

Stem cells, dear lady, are the stones which can turn into anything the sculptor wishes, and we know it, what we don't know yet is who will sculpt them and how they will age.
I know that with everything I have just told you, I have probably disappointed you or even worse, I will have taken from you in one goes that part of vocation that is essentials to spend a lifetime in a laboratory. I guess this was part of the possibilities you contemplated when you sent me the mail. I also have to tell you that, even if I didn't warn you at the beginning, that I don't consider myself an expert in stem cells and that therefore my opinions shouldn't be regarded too seriously. Even so, dear friend, just think that stem cells are, whatever I may say, a nature's mystery that deserves all the attention of eminent scientists who leave all their energy in the search of sculptors.

Always yours,

TS

Happy new year!!

2010-01-05T17:35:00.002+01:00

And here we are again! A bit cold, but Barcelona is still much better than London (where I spent New Year's eve freezing!).
Back at the PRBB, and here's some of the novelties.

- We had a Xmas lunch on December 21, just before the break. Plenty of people devoring the food there was, and enjoying the shows: the PRBB choir singing and the new group of African rythms playing the djembe live. The theater group (called PeRaBaBaus) had also prepared a fantastic video (will post it here later on, watch out for it!), very short but very funny and meaningful - you´ll love it! Here´s some pics:

- The CRG organized for the first time a competition for sculptures based on the structure of DNA. The competition aimed to encourage young people to discover the beauty and complexity of the DNA molecule by exploring new ways of communication and using art as a means of expression, and it was directed to schools. In this first edition, over 180 students participated and submitted a total of 52 sculptures divided in 4 categories. The winners for each category collected their awards on December 14 in a public event sponsored by the PRBB that took place at the park’s conference hall. All of the works where fantastic, and

the winner and finalist sculptures have been displayed at the PRBB reception since then. From this January on, the exhibition will travel to several schools to show the beauty of DNA and to strengthen the links between art and science.

That's it for now. Have a wonderful 2010, and I hope to see you around here, and I promise to be more constant, too! (that is, until I have my baby!!!!)

The major scientific discovery of the year according to PRBB researchers

2009-12-21T19:35:00.006+01:00

Every year there are hundreds of new scientific discoveries made in the world, many of them small steps, others bigger. Now that we reach the end of 2009, I have asked researchers of the different centres at the PRBB what has been, in their view, the most exciting scientific advance in their field. Their replies (below) were published in the 29th issue of El·lipse.

PROTEOMICS
Toni Pascual (IMIM-Hospital del Mar)
“Christian Reichel from the Austrian Research Centre and a proteomics and doping researcher, has discovered that the SDS universally used in SDS-PAGE to separate proteins by their molecular weight, also binds to polymers such as polyethylene glycols, modifying their migration and making their recognition by antibodies more difficult. The use of sarcosyl instead of SDS avoids this problem. This finding is very relevant given the very frequent presence of these polymers in recombinant drugs”

HUMAN GENETICS
Ben Lehner (CRG)
“Over the past year there has been a bit of a revolution in human genetics, and many variants have been discovered in the genome that influence the risk of common diseases such as cancer. The identity of these variants has the potential to tell us about the biology of such diseases, but in nearly all cases they only have a tiny overall effect on disease. This tells us that we still do not understand the genetics of complex diseases and traits - for example why tall parents have tall children. It's rather humbling considering the amount of money that has been spent.”

EVOLUTION
Arcadi Navarro (CEXS-UPF)
“One of the most remarkable discoveries of the year has been the description of a new hominid species, Ardipithecus ramidus. The discovery has everything: it gives us information about a part of our phylogeny that is very close to our common ancestor with chimpanzees and of which we had few fossils so far; confirms once more that Darwin was right; and it has been the subject of the usual media manipulation by the creationists. In Al-Jazeera they have showed a documentary in which they explain that “Ardi” “demonstrates” that the man does not come from the monkey. Spectacular!”

STEM CELLS
Núria Montserrat (CMRB)
"The reprogramming of umbilical cord cells has been one of the major advances this year, since it opens the door to the future cell therapy. These cells, because they are so young, have not had time to accumulate possible mutations and they are immunologically immature, which minimises the risk of rejection. Also, they can be reprogrammed in a short period of time and without the need to overexpress the oncogenes that so far have been used. All this makes me think they might be an optimal source for future studies in cell therapy and regenerative medicine”.

EPIDEMIOLOGY
Jordi Sunyer (CREAL)
“Peter Gluckman, from the University of Auckland, has demonstrated how environmental influences during mammalian development lead to stable changes in the epigenome that alter the individual's susceptibility to chronic metabolic and cardiovascular disease, acceleration of pubertal timing or impaired cognitive development. Overall, it provides a model for how early life offers a potential point for preventative intervention.”

Superquick update

2009-12-15T19:04:00.002+01:00

Wow, it's been a while! sorry for the delay. Not that nothing exciting has happened here at the PRBB.... since June: quite on the contrary! Here's a brief summary of some of the highlights, with links elsewhere for lack of time to write about them all now...

OPEN DAY: It took place on Oct 4, there were thousands of people visiting and they all enjoyed it very much! You can read some stories about it here or in the Science meets society blog.

ELLIPSE AWARD FOR SCIENCE POPULARIZATION: This was the first year we organised this prize. It wasn't supersuccessful (how difficult things tend to be to start with...!!), but I am quite pleased with the turnout, there were pieces in Engilsh, Catalan and Spanish, and such varied formats as poetry, theather scripts, comics, or narrative. If you don't know what I'm talking about you can refresh your neurons reading this earlier post. And to have a look at the winners you can check the award's website award's website.

OK, there's plenty more things, specially more science related, but I'll leave it here for now.

Take care!

"Parallel realities": giving voice to people with Down Syndrome

2009-06-18T13:13:00.006+02:00

Hi there,

This is a message from Mara Dierssen, a group leader at the
CRG (you can find more about her research on her website or read an interview I did to her for El·lipse, the PRBB monthly journal).

Anyway, I believe I have already mentioned previously she is my hero (look here and here for previous posts on other things she has organised). This time it is about an initiative she has been involved in to give a voice to people with Down Syndrome. Please read below and support this initiative!!!

--------------

The Catalan Down syndrome Foundation in collaboration with the Institute of Culture of Barcelona and the General Society for Authors has published a Music CD in which 10 people with Down syndrome have written the letters and collaborated in composing the music of 10 songs and are as well the actors of a video clip.

Neglect and exclusion are still too common in our society. With this we hope to increase the visibility and public recognition of the capacities of the Down syndrome people in a context of normality.

However, we need your help.

Please click in this Youtube link since this will help a lot this project!!!! You can click once a day to sum!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO7O3GtiUUw.

Also, please help us to give visibility to this initiative by sending this link to all your friends!

And finally, you can buy the CD at FNAC or El Corte Inglés or by emailing: direccio@fcsd.org :)
All the money obtained by the sales of the CD will go to the Catalan Down syndrome Foundation.

Thanks very much in advance!

Fundraising for the Abruzzo earthquake

2009-05-07T11:52:00.003+02:00

During this week of May 4-8, a group of Italians from the PRBB have organised a series of activities in order to raise funds for those affected by the Abruzzo earthquake.

1) Italian dishes: in cooperation with the PRBB restaurant, for a week PRBB residents will be able to taste genuine Italian recipes at lunchtime. They will have to pay a little more for it, but all the money will go for the fundraising.

2) Raffle: Residents can buy the raffle tickets for 3€ at the reception of the 4th floor. The first prize will be an Italian cook coming to the winner's flat one night to prepare a delicious dinner!

3) Breakfast: on Monday 4 from 9am to 11am, on the 5th floor terrace, our Italians offered a fantastic Italian style breakfast for a good prize. It was so successful they are doing it again tomorrow, Friday 8.

3) Final party: on Friday May 8, and in order to finish the solidarity week, we will have a party at the inner square of the PRBB, with live music, batucada and the draw for the raffle.

Well done the Italian community for this good initiative! Will post some pics of the events later on and will let you know how much we raised!

"The illusions of the brain" Fair in Barcelona

2009-05-05T10:32:00.002+02:00

So many things happening this week! Write this one down in your agenda.

From 10am to midnight on Friday May 8 you will be able to participate of talks, projections, experiments, concerts, a tennis table show and even a magic one... everything in the framework of a fascinating scientific trip.

This is the fair “Illusions of the Brain” (davinci.crg.es/ilusiones), which is organised by the CRG (one of the centres at the PRBB), open to the public and free.

Some of the highlithgs will be:

- the presentation of the CD “Realidades paralelas” (Parallel realities), a CD with songs whose lyrics have been written by teenagers with Down Syndrome.
- a scientist will explain to us why we were not able to detect the magic tricks a magician just did.
- the European table tennis champions will play an acrobatic game and a scientist will explain to us how their brain has spetial spatial capabilities
- several experiments in which we will be able to hear people coming who don't exist, to do a virtual race only with our mind, etc.
- a talk about the biological bases of beauty
- and much more!

It will take place at the Nau Central de Fabra i Coats. Schools do need to reserve in advance calling 93 316 01 00 or emailing comunicacio@crg.es.

Presentation of the Health Impact Fund

2009-05-04T16:54:00.001+02:00

Thomas Pogge, from Yale University, came today to the PRBB to present, for the first time in Spain, the Health Impact Fund (HIF). This is an interesting initiative of the Incentives for Global Health (IGH)
Incentives for Global Health (IGH), a non-profit organization, and its aim is to stimulate research and development of life-saving pharmaceuticals accessible to the world's poor.

I believe that this is an issue of global importance, and so I was a bit disappointed to see the PRBB conference hall was not very full at all. But then I am often disappointed by this fact…

Access to medication in poor countries is a big problem. Not the only one leading to poverty and disease in these countries (there’s the lack of drinking water, corruption, etc.), but one that should be preventable.

There are two main related issues that affect accessibility to drugs nowadays:
- the innovation problem: that is, the fact that there is little R+D+I investment in diseases that affect mainly the developing countries. In fact, out of the 1558 new drugs developed between 1997 and 2004, only 21 were for tropical diseases and tuberculosis.
- the access problem: that is, that the price of patented drugs is too high for many people (specially in the developing world) to pay

Both problems are related since, if prices of drugs go down so that everyone has access to them, the return for the pharma companies is lower and they are therefore less interested in spending money in innovation.

The Health Impact Fund (HIF) presents itself as a long-term sustainable solution to continue innovation in the drug market without impending access to the medicaments. The idea, as I understand it, is the following.

- When a new drug is developed, the company can choose to register it with the HIF, rather than applying for a patent, as they currently all do.
- By doing so, they compromise themselves to sell the drug at cost-price (that is, to not make any money from the selling of the drug to the patients).
- In exchange, they will receive money from the HIF during the next 10 years. That money will be a share of the total HIF fund, which is expected to be about 5 bilion €.
- The amount of that share will be calculated annually, and will be proportional to the drug’s global health impact (understood as how much is that drug improving people’s lives).
- The total amount of the fund will be financed by governments. Other agencies, funds, etc. could also participate (e.g. Gates Foundation), but governments are the only ones that can commit for a long-term funding, which is needed to give the industry
- After the initial 10 years, the company must offer, at zero cost, global licenses on all the intellectual property required for the manufacture and sale of the drug, so that from then on anyone can manufacture the drug.

After Dr Pogges’ talk there was a round table that included members from pharma companies, NGOs, the Catalan government, researchers, and patent experts. Some of the questions and concerns raised there were:

- How would the price of the drugs be decided? Who should participate in this decision? Should the pharma companies be involved, or should it be independent assessors?

- How would it be decided what health impact each drug has and what percentage of the fund they are therefore entitled to?
o an important role of the HIF will be actually to collect lots of data regarding this – actually 10% of the fund would be used for following specific drugs, see who takes it and what are the consequences, etc. These data would be useful not only for the HIF but for lots of NOGs, international agencies, etc. interested in the health situation in poor countries.
o The idea is to check the real impact of the drug, and to give money back to the industries based not on ‘how many drugs they sold’ but on how much those drugs improved the condition of patients. This means (and this is an interesting point) that it would be in the interest of the pharma industries not only selling the drug, but also making sure that they are well prescribed, taken properly (a big problem in these countries is that people don’t take the drugs for the amount of time necessary, etc.), etc. Some ways in which the industry could help with this is writing instructions in the local languages, offering courses to local doctors and nurses, collaborating with NGOs and international agencies who work locally, etc.

One question I have is: would the pharma companies be really interested in this? I don’t see them making more money with this initiative than they currently make, so why would they decide to go for HIF? One suggestion that came from someone at the audience was to create a ‘HIF’ stamp that would give companies quality/moral value that would make them more attractive to costumers (similar to having a ‘fair trade’ stamp, or ‘organic’, etc.). I am not sure that would work for medicines, but it’s a good idea…

There were many other things discussed, and many more that were remained unspoken, but if you are interested you can check more about this initiative in the Health Impact Fund (HIF) website. At the moment Thomas Pogge is travelling the world talking to all the potential stake holders (governments, scientists, pharma companies, NGOs, lawyers, economists, philosophers, everyone!), presenting the initiative and collecting all the possible feedback to improve the proposal.
I hope that soon we will see a final HIF proposition that responds to everyone’s concerns and that can help, finally, making good drugs accessible to those who need them.

What's behind our genes? Come to La Pedrera to know!

2009-04-29T15:55:00.000+02:00

AND... before I forget, there is something else happening next week. The next cafè científic organised by the Science meets Society (SmS) group at the PRBB will take place next Wednesday May 6 at 7’30pm at La Pedrera (a beautiful Gaudi building).

The subject discussed will be how can organisms as different as a fly and a human come from very similar genome? The experts who will help discussing this will be Juan Valcarcel, from the CRG and Jaume Bertranpetit from the CEXS-UPF.

There will be some snacks and drinks. Do not miss it!!

Title:     What's behind our genome?
Speakers: Juan Valcarcel & Jaume Bertranpetit
Where:    La Pedrera
When:      Wednesday 06 of May at 19:30

Making medicines accessible to the world's poor

2009-04-29T15:39:00.004+02:00

Hi there,

for once, I am announcing something BEFORE it happens...! I really am going to get better with this blog, I promise!

Anyway, this is interesting and important.

Next Monday May 4 at 12 o’clock at the conference hall of the PRBB, there will be the presentation of the Health Impact Fund for the first time in Spain.

The presentation will start with a talk by Thomas Pogge, from Yale University, entitled: “How to make pharmaceuticals that are accessible for the whole world?”. The talk will be followed by a round table chaired by Joan Josep Moreso, vice-chancellor of the UPF. Other participants at the round table will be members of NGOs, etc.

The Health Impact Fund is an initiative of the Incentives for Global Health (IGH), a non-profit organization, and its aim is to stimulate research and development of life-saving pharmaceuticals accessible to the world's poor.

I will certainly go to the talk and will try my best to give you a good summary afterwards.

A VERY special Sant Jordi: love is in the air!

2009-04-24T14:06:00.003+02:00

Every year, the PRBB residents surprise us with something new during the celebrations that are organised at the park for the whole community, such as the Christmas party, the Beach volleyball championship or the Sant Jordi celebration. We have been able to shout in rock concerts, to see a ‘capoeira roda’, to dance ‘sardanes’, to hear the angelical voices of the PRBB choir and even to enjoy a trapeze show, everything done by the residents themselves.

But when we thought we had seen it all... on April 22, 2009, we laughed and cried again. Apart from the traditional book exchange of the Sant Jordi celebration – this year more than 500! – and of the roses that filled the square, the PRBB theatre group, which exists since only four months, offered us the best that can be offered: a smile and a good time amongst friends.

More smiles, and even one or two emotional tears, accompanied the first public declaration of love – and what better day to do it? – to take place at the PRBB. The lucky girl (me!) was very surprised and emotional, altough she nearly killed the boy because of the embarrassment he made her go through. The about 200 residents that were witnesses of it had just finished enjoying the demonstration of the PRBB capoeira group, whose members (including the boy and the girl) showed the ability and agility they are acquiring week after week. Furthermore, continuing with the sports, the day finished with a raffle to choose which beach volley teams will have to confront each other in the next months.

Difficult to beat? Wait until the next party! (although I can't imagine what can come after this!!!!)

The PRBB organizes two 'science popularization' awards

2009-03-11T15:18:00.003+01:00

For the fourth consecutive year the PRBB and the CEXS-UPF organize the “Premi PRBB de recerca en ciències de la salut i de la vida”, an award for the best research works by high school students in life sciences. This year the award is also open to the participation of VET (Vocational Education and Training) students in health and chemistry.

But this is not the only novelty of 2009. The PRBB wants to work not only with students, but also with scientists, housewives, lawyers, painters: with any person who is interested in science and wants to help in its communication. Thanks to the award “Premi El·lipse” they will be able to communicate science to the general public, be it by words or graphically. This year, the theme of this new award will be stem cells. So if you have ever wanted to write a theatre script about a cancer patient that receives stem cell therapy, or to create a comic about the life of a researcher working on this field, this is your opportunity! The written material can be in Catalan, Spanish or English.

For more information on both awards please see www.prbb.org/premi and www.prbb.org/premiellipse. The deadlines to send your work are April 14 for the “Premi PRBB” and September 1 for the “Premi El·lipse”. Amongst other prizes, you could win a laptop for the best research project or €1000 for the best science communication work about stem cells. Good luck!

Theatre and science!!

2009-02-05T16:35:00.002+01:00

Building up on the previous social activities at the park, a theatre group has just been created at the PRBB. For now we are getting started, doing exercises to let go our bodies, to increase trust in our colleagues, etc. Soon we will do some lessons of interpretation and finally we will prepare a theatre play to present during this year’s PRBB Open Day (which will be on the 6th of June – note it down!).

The piece we will interpret that has already been represented, driven by the Museum of Natural Sciences. It is about Darwin and the Oxford evolution debate. We have the same director who has directed the play previously and she is the one teaching us. Her name is Verónica, she is from Chile and she’s good!

We are rehearsing every Tuesday from 6 to 8pm at the inner square offices (the same offices, incidentally, in which PRBB residents can also enjoy choir rehearsal on Mondays and capoeira lessons on Thursdays!).

“The world is ours””

2009-02-04T13:03:00.002+01:00

This is an interview with Dr. Paco Real, who used to be at the IMIM-Hospital del Mar. This interview appeared in the second issue of El·lipse, which by now you must already know is the PRBB's monthly newspaper.

------

Dr. Real was born in Barcelona, he studied medicine at the UAB in Bellaterra and worked at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York for 7 years. From there he moved back to Barcelona, nearly 20 years ago, to coordinate what today is the Research Unit in Cell and Molecular Biology at IMIM. He studies the molecular mechanisms of pancreatic and bladder cancer, he is a professor at UPF and the father of an 8-year old girl, and he loves music and reading.

How did you end up doing research?
When I was 12 I had a neighbour on the third floor who was an immunologist. He used to talk about “-bulines” and I always wondered what the first nine letters, “immunoglo“, which I could never hear properly, meant… When I discovered it, I studied medicine at the UAB in order to do research in immunology. Later, while receiving lessons at the Hospital de Sant Pau, I met two excellent doctors who made me become also interested in clinical medicine. Actually, I was very fortunate in having two real mentors, one in the hospital (César Díaz) and one in the lab (José Luis Rodríguez); most people have none. They both offered me their time and knowledge, and I will never forget that…

Then you left to New York...
Here it was very difficult to do research and practise medicine at the same time, so I rejected my resident medical post and I left to the US. There I was doing my PhD in cancer immunology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering hospital, and at the same time I could undertake clinical activity.

You came back to Barcelona to join the IMIM in 1988 – why?
Because I did not want to spend all my life thinking that perhaps one day I should come back home. I was still young, and I decided to give myself 4 years to see if I could make things work out for me here. On January 6, 1992, exactly four years later, I started adding and substracting, and the final result was positive; and so here I am.

How was coming back?
They were very interesting years. IMIM had existed for years, but it had stopped working for years, too! We had to do several reorganizations and we got great help from both the people who were already at IMIM and the new arrivals. The situation has now changed a lot; the PRBB was something completely unimaginable back then. On the ‘Three Kings’s day’ in which I arrived back to Barcelona I could have never thought of asking for such a present!

But you stopped practising medicine?
At the beginning I did some work at the Hospital del Mar, but I don’t anymore. But every time I see a doctor talking to a patient I am very jealous. And my research is completely conditioned by my medical education. When I do research, I think of diseases, not molecules.

And you have also stopped doing bench work…
When I am here that’s the case, yes, the group has grown a lot and it requires lots of time. To do some experiments, I have left on a sabbatical a couple of times, to France and to the US. It’s a humility lesson that every scientist should do; you see how experiments don’t work out and then you understand your poor PhD students.

What is the best and the worst of being a scientist?
The best, that you are free and have no limits. The worst… that you are the limit! But then you can always collaborate.

What would you be if you were not a scientist?
I can see myself doing many different things, but I think I would like to be a bookseller of the type that don’t exist anymore, those that read a lot of books and discuss them with their customers…

Which has been the best moment of your scientific life?
It hasn’t arrived yet (I hope!); it’s always tomorrow.

Studying the effect of drugs in humans

2009-02-03T10:57:00.002+01:00

The clinical research group in human pharmacology and neurosciences of the pharmacology unit at IMIM-Hospital del Mar, directed by Magí Farré, has been studying both the physiologic and mental effects of drugs of abuse, such as ecstasy (MDMA) or cannabis, for more than 20 years.

They do cardiovascular and motor activity performance studies, as well as arterial pressure measurements and blood analyses to learn about the pharmacokinetics of drugs; how they are metabolized and distributed, etc. The mental effects are studied through questionnaires and behaviour studies, as well as by PET (positron emission tomography) and FMR (functional magnetic resonance) of the brain. These are done at the IAT, located also at the PRBB. The unit, which has 12 beds on their premises, also does phase I and II clinical trials to check the efficiency and tolerance of new drugs.

All the studies must follow a clinical assay protocol, which can take between 5 and 12 months to be accepted by the local Ethics Committee for Clinical Research and by the Spanish Drug Agency. The studies must also be double-blind: neither the patient nor the scientist knows whether the patient is taking a drug or a placebo. According to Farré, there are often surprises that exemplify the important role played by the mind. For example, in a study done years ago by Jordi Camí, founder of this laboratory and currently the director of the PRBB, it was demonstrated that the manipulation of the expectations – to think you are taking a drug when you are not, or the other way around – was as important than the real effect of the drug.

Some of the current studies of the laboratory, which can last from one single day to a whole year, are about the effects of recreational drugs in the inhibition of the metabolism of medications. Other studies are about how some genetic mutations can make the drugs affect us in different ways, or about the different effects of ecstasy in men and women. According to Farré, the most important contribution of the group has been in the ecstasy field, in which they have done things that had never been done before. Another characteristic of the group, nearly unique in the world, is that pretty much all the research process is done in humans; the substances are administered in humans and their effects, the drugs concentration and their metabolites in different biological fluids are measured.

The clinical assays laboratory, apart from their own studies, also offers services to third parties, including pharmaceutical companies such as GSK (GlaxoSmithKline). They also collaborate with the psychiatry and drug addiction service of the Hospital del Mar, and with Jaume Marrugat, director of the research program on inflammatory and cardiovascular processes. With him they do studies about nutrition, such as the effects of the antioxidants in olive oil or wine.

Neurons derived from mouse embryonic stem cells

2009-01-28T16:35:00.002+01:00

This picture appeared in the 14th edition of El·lipse, the PRBB monthly newspaper.

This picture, taken by my good friend Sabrina Desbordes, of the hematopoietic stem cell biology and differentiation group at the CRG, shows colonies of neurons derived from mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) using specific common protocols. Neurons (seen in green) are obtained after two weeks of differentiation on stromal cells, which confer a neural fate to mESCs. Using adequate cytokine cocktails, different neuronal cell types can be differentiated. The nuclei of the cells are stained in blue.

“Being a scientit is a way of life”

2009-01-27T10:16:00.004+01:00

This is an interview that appeared in the 18th edition of El·lipse, the PRBB monthly newspaper.

The daughter of a painter and a neurosurgeon, Mara Dierssen has always known what she wanted to be. This 46-year old researcher is the head of a leading research group in neurobiology at the CRG, teaches at three universities, organises many outreach activities, sings in a rock and roll band and has four sons.

When did you become interested in science?
You can tell a scientist from early on, we are the ones who always want to know everything... I was always fascinated by the nervous system, specially the big questions such as how do we keep memories, or why we feel emotions. After studying Medicine I did my PhD at the University of Cantàbria in neuroscience.

After a postdoc at the UAB I went back to Cantàbria to start my own lab. I started from scratch, but soon people arrived to work with me in mental retardation. It was a very productive period.

And then you came back to Catalonia...
Yes, to the Institut de Recerca Oncológica with Xavier Estivill, who had a very potent group in the genetics of Down syndrome (DS). These years were very good and I learned a lot.

From there you came to the CRG. What are your main research lines?
We basically study mental retardation, specially DS, and also neuropsychiatric diseases.

You are very much in contact with the people who have the disabilities you study – how do you value this?
We scientists cannot be detached form the reality we are studying. For me it is important to know that there are real people behind my research. And getting to know them helps one to understand better the disease. Also, I think we have a lot to learn from people with disabilities, from their attitude and willpower.

It seems impossible that you have time to do everything – how is your typical day?
Tiring! I wake up at 4’45 am and I come to work: articles, meetings, experiments, classes, paperwork. I eat something quick in front of my computer and I try to leave at about 17’30 or 18h. When I get home I help my sons with their homework, we have dinner, chat a bit and I go bed at about 11’30 pm.

Do you think that research is an egalitarian world?
I think we are getting there, but it isn’t yet. The big decisions are still in hands of men, who occupy the majority of top positions. When I started it was even worse: before getting a contract they asked you whether you were thinking of having children, and that was a decisive factor!

What do you think about science communication to the public?
If we want science to be valued and to receive funding from public sources, we cannot ignore the public. And, if it is properly explained, people love science! It also favours scientific vocations. A few people have come to do some experiments in my lab after having attended a science outreach event.

The problem is that this is not valued in Spain, it is rather considered a waste of time. Also, it requires a lot of time and effort and, in an environment with so much pressure, this is difficult. And there is zero economic support. It is a real misery compared with what is dedicated to other social or cultural events.

What is the best about science?
The intellectual challenge! The satisfaction of understanding a process, having to revise my own thinking every five minutes because there is something that doesn’t fit.

And the worst?
The job insecurity, which doesn’t allow us to start ambitious projects. I had to start my lab five times, and I didn’t actually have a contract until I was 40: I had only fellowships. Of course mobility is a positive thing, but a balance is necessary.

What would you be if you were not a scientist?
I would just not be! Being a scientist is not a profession, it is a way of life.

DNA uncovers your geographic origen

2009-01-23T11:00:00.003+01:00

An European woman, a Yoruba man, a Japanese child. Which historical and demographic events explain the genetic differences between human populations? Two of the genetic markers that are most used to study human migrations are the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), a type of DNA found within the cellular organelles called mitochondria. These are the only two types of DNA that do not undergo genetic recombination, a phenomenon in which the DNA sequences coming from the mother and the father mix up. The Y chromosome is transmitted intact from the father, and the mtDNA comes always from the mother. The fact that they come always from one parent only makes it much easier to follow their lineage.

Thanks to these markers we know about the large human migrations, such as the colonisation of America and the islands of the Pacific, or the migration out of Africa that took place about 60,000 years ago, first to Asia and Australia and then to Europe and the American continent. We also know that the mtDNA is globally more homogeneous than the Y chromosome. This implies that, contrary to what is usually assumed, women have migrated more than men. This global migration pattern can probably be explained by many small migrations due to the fact that women used to go to live to the regions where their husbands were from.

But there are still many local migrations to understand. For example, the research group on evolutionary biology at the CEXS-UPF has recently done a study on the Cuban population in order to see if there was an Amerindian genetic footprint left. They were the original population of the island, who were exterminated during the European colonisation. The results show that, even though there are no Amerindian markers in the Y chromosome, up to a third of the genetic background of the mtDNA is Amerindian. This implies that the colonisers had sexual relations with the Amerindian women before their total extermination.

And why is it interesting to study migrations? Apart from the purely historical interest, it is important for genetic epidemiology studies to know the structure of the current populations. For example, to determine if a common genetic variant in a population is associated to a disease it is necessary to first know whether this population is homogeneous.

Molecular language: how cells communicate

2009-01-15T16:22:00.003+01:00

This is an article that appeared in the 5th edition of El·lipse, the PRBB monthly newspaper.

Communicate or die, that’s the law for cells. Cells need to be aware of what’s happening in their environment and react accordingly. For that, they have very complex signalling mechanisms, which, unless the signal is diffusible, tend to start with a receptor protein located at the membrane of the cell (what separates the cell from its surroundings). This receptor senses a signal from the environment and then triggers a cascade of proteins that will activate other proteins, and so on; this is called a signalling cascade. In eukaryotic cells such as the human ones kinases and phosphatases - a type of proteins that add or remove a chemical group to other proteins and modify their activity - are frequent components of these signalling pathways, The signalling cascade will finish in the nucleus, the part of the cell where the DNA is stored, and will either activate or repress certain genes. The action of these genes will dictate the response to the initial signal.

The signals that trigger a reaction in a cell can be external, such as several types of stress, including starvation, heat shock or osmotic stress. However, the stress signal can be endogenous, as observed for oxidative stress: the use of oxygen during respiration can generate reactive species as a side-product, and these species can damage all types of biomolecules, including DNA.

Furthermore, cells also need to talk to each other in order to behave as a whole within the organism. These cell-to-cell signals can be through physical contact or through molecules that are released from one cell and captured by another.

The genome in a microchip

2009-01-14T11:29:00.002+01:00

This is an article that appeared in the 4th edition of El·lipse, the PRBB monthly newspaper.

In the genomics world, the microarray is the king. Microarrays are 5 cm long and 2 cm wide slides in which up to one million microscopic drops can be placed next to each other. Each of these drops, which are chemically attached to the glass, forms a dot that contains a single probe – a piece of DNA that corresponds to a fragment of the genome. This way one can have a big collection of genes, even the whole genome, represented in a few slides. Microarrays allow scientists to do analyses in thousands of genes at once, analyses that would normally have to be done one gene at a time.

The most common of these analyses is the study of gene expression. Genes are “expressed” when they are activated in order to give rise to a protein, which will carry out the function specified by the gene. In this path from DNA to protein there are some intermediaries, the messenger RNAs (mRNAs). Each gene produces an mRNA, and the mRNAs are what scientists usually detect to know that a gene is being expressed. For this, mRNAs are isolated from cells, labelled with fluorescent molecules, and placed on the top of microarrays, where each mRNA will recognise its probe – the dot that contains its related DNA – and will bind it specifically. This way one can look at the microarray and see which dots are fluorescent; these will represent the genes that are being expressed.

With this system, scientists can find out which genes are expressed in a specific condition and at what level – according to the fluorescent intensity. They can also compare two conditions, by labelling the mRNAs from the different conditions with different colours. For instance, the gene expression of a healthy and a diseased person can be compared, or that of the same person before and after treatment with a drug. Knowing which genes are expressed in one condition or another gives hints as to which genes may be implied in the disease or what effect the drug has.

At the PRBB there is a core microarray service since 2001, directed by Dr. Lauro Sumoy (CRG). This service is used by several groups from the centres of the PRBB who work in very diverse fields, from molecular biology to evolution.

“Air pollution is a real health problem”

2009-01-13T12:18:00.003+01:00

This is an article profiling Dr. Nino Kuenzli’s group at CREAL. It appeared in the 2nd edition of El·lipse, the PRBB monthly newspaper.

------------------------

The group directed by Nino Kuenzli is very “fuzzy”. As his research on health problems caused by air pollution is very interdisciplinary, he works with experts in epidemiology, statistics, genetics, molecular biology, exposure, aerosol and health sciences from all over the world.

Dr. Kuenzli’s current main project is testing the hypothesis that pollution causes atherosclerosis. He initiated a pilot study when he was in Los Angeles, in which he found a relationship between air pollution and the thickness of the arteries – a marker of atherosclerosis. He is now investigating this in adults in the Girona region. For this, he is collaborating with Jaume Marrugat’s group, from IMIM, and he’s using the 3,000 people cohort of their REGICOR cardiovascular study, which started in 2000.The images of the arteries are sent to Amsterdam where the thickness of the wall is derived. The air pollution measurements are done by Laura Bouso in Girona.

Dr. Kuenzli is also leading the air pollution group of the European Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS), in which more than 20 centres around Europe collaborate; he and Raquel Garcia work in a Swiss study (SAPALDIA) to investigate the effect of air pollution on adult asthma; he is an advisor in EGEA, a French study on genetics and asthma; and he’s a collaborator of the most important air pollution study ever done in children, the Children’s Health Study of the University of Southern California (USC), in which thousands of children participate in lung function measurements every year since 1992. Maria Mirabelli, a collaborator of Dr. Kuenzli, is now investigating the impact of wild-fires on the health of these children. Moreover, Dr. Kuenzli and the USC team just started a further study on air pollution, atherosclerosis, and lung health with USC college students– the TROY study.

According to Dr. Kuenzli, Barcelona is too polluted even by the lax European standards, very car-oriented and with extremely dense traffic. “It has been shown that children who live within 100 m of dense traffic have more problems with lung development and asthma; this should be taken into account in urban planning and policy making”. Says Dr. Kuenzli: “It is estimated that if particles go up by 10g/m3, mortality increases by ~4%”. He and Laura Pérez, a risk assessor, are estimating the health benefits of the air quality management plan of the Generalitat. The target of the plan is to be in compliance with European air quality standards by 2010.

One of the most important developments in the field, explains Dr. Kuenzli, is the improvement in estimating people’s exposure to air pollution. There are now very powerful models available, in which measurements and geographic information are used to develop air quality maps. “In simple words: to know air quality at your home, we geocode your address and link your location to these maps”.

“Being a scientist is like playing football: when you work you play, and this keeps you motivated”

2009-01-12T10:47:00.004+01:00

This is an interview to Jordi Mestres, a scientist working at the GRIB, a mixed unit of the IMIM and the UPF focused in bioinformatics and located at the PRBB. This interview appeared in the first edition of the El·lipse newspaper, which I am in charge of publishing every month.

-------

Dr. Jordi Mestres is from Girona, has lived in the United States, the Netherlands and Scotland, and three years ago he came to work at the PRBB as the head of the chemogenomics group at the GRIB. A year ago, he created the spin-off company Chemotargets, which develops new tools to identify active molecules for therapeutic targets. Jordi Mestres tells us how he arrived where he is.

When did you start being interested in science?
At high school. I also liked History, but I saw I could not change it…

You then decided to study Chemistry: why?
In chemistry not everything was established; and I could study it in my home town…

And you got in touch with the pharmaceutical industry….
During my PhD I did a 3-month stage at a company in Michigan. I thought it was interesting, because I had to develop new methodologies and what I was doing had practical applications.

You have worked in pharmaceutical companies for 7 years, then came back to academia. What are the main differences between both worlds?
In general, the best from the academic world is the environment that favours the generation of new ideas and the establishment of all type of collaborations. The best in industry is that projects are therapeutically very interesting and that you have access to great amounts of data and very generous budgets.

What made you come back and start a research group?
In Edinburgh we had our first daughter, Fiona, and soon pressure from the grandparents to have her close by was stronger than our desire to stay there…And work is not everything in life, neither is money! Here, despite a huge salary reduction, quality of life is very good: there’s sun everyday, the sea next by, and the grandparents who can take care of the children, and money cannot pay that! But we would consider leaving again, if circumstances changed.

What has been the most satisfactory moment of your career?
Perhaps the recognition, in 2000, of being the inventor of a series of molecules therapeutically useful, the first of the four patents I have. Lately, the concession of the Corwin Hansch Award in 2006 by the QSAR and Molecular Modelling international society.

Science: collaboration or competition?
Science in its pure state is honest collaboration, and this is when it is most enjoyable. But it is true that there is a lot of pressure to publish and to compete. In our case, however, it is very important to collaborate: what would we do with a perfect drug design without someone who can synthesize it and test it? Also, at the PRBB we have the luxury of being amongst 1000 people, many of them with a potential therapeutic target…

What is important to do research?
Curiosity, scepticism and good humour!

What would you be if you were not a scientist?
A musician, most likely. When I was a child I used to sing at the Escolania de Montserrat, where I studied piano and violin. But in harmony lessons at the Conservatory of Girona I used to do chemical reactions, and even though I have never left music, one day I had to choose. But I have never doubted my choice: I love my job.

Lost in translation?

2009-01-09T13:40:00.004+01:00

(from an article in El·lipse, the PRBB monthy newspaper, published in January 2008)

The essential information for life is encoded in the DNA. However, it is mostly the proteins that make cells work. How do nucleotides, the basic units that form the DNA, transfer the information to the amino acids that form the proteins? This happens through two steps: transcription, the transfer of information from DNA to mRNA which occurs in the nucleus of the cell, and translation, the transfer of information from mRNA to protein which occurs in the cytoplasm. Transcription was thought for years to be the main mechanism to control gene expression, but translation has now been found to be more important than expected.

The genetic code specifies that each codon (formed by three nucleotides) in the mRNA corresponds to a specific amino acid. The transfer RNAs (tRNAs) are the molecules that execute this code by carrying an amino acid on one of their sides and binding to the corresponding codon on the other side. All this happens within molecular machines called ribosomes, which catalyse the reaction. Translation finishes when the ribosome faces one of three existing ‘stop codons’ on the mRNA. When this occurs, no tRNA can recognize it and the amino acid chain is released.

Most of the energy that a cell consumes is dedicated to the making of ribosomes and to translation, an essential process for life. Thus, it is not surprising that translation is highly regulated. For example, cell stress and physiology are controlled by the activity of the translation initiation factor eIF2alpha, which is modified under stress and ultimately leads to a response that changes the transcriptional profile of cells. This is one of the many examples in which transcription is under translational control. Failure of this control system contributes to diseases such as diabetes, metabolic sindrome, osteoporosis and neurodegeneration.

The life of a cell

2009-01-08T10:30:00.002+01:00

All living organisms are formed from millions of micrometric units, the cells, which are constantly growing, reproducing and dying throughout the lifetime of an organism. The cell cycle is divided into the interphase – the time between divisions – and the mitotic phase, in which the cell divides physically. The interphase is formed by the growth stage (G1), the duplication stage (S), during which the cell duplicates its DNA, and the maturity stage (G2). After G2, the mitotic phase, which can be divided into 2 stages, begins. The first stage is mitosis, in which the chromosomes are shared between the two daughter cells. The second stage is cytokinesis, during which the mother cell divides physically. The cell cycle is ordered and strictly regulated. This regulation is essential, since the chaos of the cell cycle is the main cause of cancer: when there are errors in the cycle, the cells don’t stop dividing and the tumour grows.

At the PRBB centres there are many groups performing research into different aspects of the cell cycle. Among them are Dr. Gil’s group (IMIM), who focus on the biochemical connection between programmed cell death and the cell cycle regulation in mice, and the groups of Dr. Hidalgo’s and Dr. Ayté’s from the CEXS-UPF, who are trying to understand the control of the cell cycle in yeast, a model organism widely used in this field. Dr. Posas (CEXS-UPF) also uses yeast to study the control of cell progression by the protein Hog1 MAPK, whilst Dr. Muñoz (CRG) is interested in the role of MAPKs in the control of proliferation and differentiation of the muscle. Another group is Dr. Vernos’ (CRG), who study the chromosomes sharing during mitosis in frogs.

Christmas lunch at the PRBB

2008-12-18T19:05:00.001+01:00

Yesterday December 17th we celebrated Christmas at the PRBB with a meal for all residents. Lunch took place at 1’30pm at the restaurant, and moret han 800 people attended!

Previously, the PRBB Choir (in which I sing!) gave a concert. We went floor to floor, starting on the 7th, singing two songs in each floor, and bringing our club of fans that grew a bit more with each floor we descended. We finished at the ground floor, were lots of people were waiting to go into the restaurant to eat, and sang all 7 or so songs we had prepared. Everyone loved it and it was really good fun!

I’ll see if i can post some videos of the choir here at some point.

By the way, the choir is only one of the “social activities” the PRBB organises for its residents. As you should by now know, there is also a group of capoeira, and soon there will be a theatre one! Also, PRBB residents on their own organise themselves to play football, basketball, and God knows what else…!

Two million euros of the Marató will go to researchers at PRBB

2008-12-05T15:27:00.002+01:00

More than two million euros, out of the seven million collected by the Marató de TV3, will go to research projects from the centres at the PRBB, some of them in collaboration with other centres, such as the CSIC and the CNIC.

159 groups from all over Catalonia have applied for the grants of the Fundació “La Marató de TV3”, which this year has given the money collected from particular individuals, entities or companies to the study of cardiovascular diseases. From these projects, only 26 were selected, and 6 of them are from researchers at the PRBB.

The projects that will receive funding– between 200,000 and 500,000€ each – are directed by Roberto Elosua (IMIM-Hospital del Mar), Cristina López (CEXS-UPF), Miguel Valverde (CEXS-UPF) and Mariano Senti (IMIM-Hospital del Mar ), James Sharpe (CRG), Antonio García de Herreros (IMIM-Hospital del Mar) and Jaume Marrugat (IMIM-Hospital del Mar) and Nino Kuenzli (CREAL).

Videos and podcasts by scientists at PRBB

2008-12-02T13:34:00.004+01:00

Hi there,

The Intervals courses that have been going on at the PRBB are being a great success, and you can see here some of the results. (Intervals is the programme for continuing professional development that is offered to all PRBB residents since this year).

Enjoy the videos, and podcasts produced by the participants in the Intervals courses “Programme Visual Story Telling” and “Radio and Podcasting summer workshop”.

Congratulations and many thanks to Bélen, Antonios, Tom, Rosa, Marta and Joan Marc, Anna, Rui, Maruxa, Carla, Uli, Dani, for all their hard work. We hope their videos, and podcasts will inspire other PRBB residents to join the Intervals courses next year and let their imagination run free!

Happy day

2008-11-05T16:51:00.002+01:00

Obama has won the American elections!!!!

That has, one would hope, positive implications for everything (external politics), but also for science. His predecesor believed in intelligent design, didn't understand (or didn't care about) global warming, banned public research on stem cells, and freezed the research budget of the NIH. Will all change now? Let's hope so...

Open Day and: Water in Canada, not for all

2008-11-03T15:50:00.006+01:00

Just a quick entry to say that the Open Day was a great success!!!! (I wasn't there, regretfully, but it seems lots of people came to do experiments, visit the laboratories, listen to the scientists explaining why research is important, etc.).

You can check the PRBB Open Day website for some more info on what happened, or check this blog. And make sure you keep the date for next year!

Another (completely unrelated) thing, something I learned today at one of the scientific conferences that take place here at the PRBB. The speaker was Louise Potvin, from the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine of the Université de Montreal in Canada, and her talk was entitled "Public Health Interventions: A Cause of Health Disparities?".

So, here's the fact: Even though Canada has the largest reserves of fresh water in the world, the Aborigen reserves in the north of the country don't have drinking water!!!!!

I've always liked and admired Canada and its people, but obviously they (or at least their leaders and responsible people) are not doing enough...

xx

On 4h of October, Science for everyone!!!!

2008-09-18T20:05:00.004+02:00

I cannot believe it's been so long, and again I have no time to write...

But I do want to invite you all to the PRBB Open Day that will take place on Saturday October 4.

Discover the science and the real life of researchers in the fascinating elliptical building at the beach of Barcelona. On Saturday, October 4, the large European infrastructure PRBB with more than 1.200 people doing research in biomedicine invites the public to an open day. A group of young scientists from the centers at the park have set up a full day program with experiments, videos, posters, a scientific round table session and a final party with live music and DJs. The different activities for families with children, students or simply curious people start at 11am and last until midnight.

The public will be able to do real experiments to extract DNA, observe proteins or living cells and learn about various biological concepts through posters and talks with researchers at the Charles Darwin square at the sea side of the building. Guided visiting tours through the research park and its laboratories are scheduled between 11am and 6pm and a bar and sandwich service is provided during the day. Why it is necessary to invest in science and what all this is for, will be discussed at a roundtable at 7pm. The day closes with a final party at 8.30pm that is open to everybody.

The Open Day is an initiative of “Science Meets Society”, a group of young and mostly international researchers from the different centers at PRBB, who want to engage and share knowledge with the “non-scientific” public.

The Barcelona Biomedical Research Park PRBB is an initiative of the Catalan Government, the Pompeu Fabra University and the city of Barcelona and assembles various research centres and technology platforms. PRBB provides a fresh and innovative approach to give answers to basic and clinical issues in biomedicine. The different research centers at the park that support the “Open Day” initiative are IMIM, CRG, CEXS-UPF, CMRB and CREAL.

ESOF - day 1

2008-08-04T16:45:00.001+02:00

Wow! Such a long time without writing and now, so many things happened in such a short time, I don't have time to tell you about it all.

It's because of the ESOF, the European Science Open Forum which started last Friday and which joined 4800 participants from all Europe. There was just too much going on from Friday till Tuesday, it was impossible to see it all (and continue with your work and life!). But here's an excerpt of some of the things I've seen.

The inauguration was presented by a very good guy, Toby Harper. He's an actor who I assumed leaves in Barcelona (his Catalan accent was very good!) and did a great presentation during the whole evening. He pointed out nutrition, HIV/AIDS, petrol prizes and global warming as the big issues of our time, and indeed some of them were subjects extensively discussed during the whole forum.

Then came the politicial speeches (8 people in total, a little bit too much), before Pedro Alonso, a researcher who studies malaria and just got the Premio Príncipe de Asturias for his work, gave the inaugurational speech, entitled “Global Health Challenges”.

Alonso mentioned how health had improved a lot, in all parts of the world, over the last centruy, with an increase in the life expectancy of 25 years (this, I assume, in the developed world). He made a specific mention of the erradication of smallpox as being the biggest achievement in medicine (and even in science) of all times so far.

Yet, despite this encouraging start, communicable diseases were mentioned as the biggest challenge in medicine right now. He talked about the close relationship between diseases such as AIDS, TB and malaria, and poverty, citing Winslow: “Men and women were sick because they were poor, they became poorer because they were sicker, and sicker because they were poorer” (here's some food for thought!).

Continuing with this link and the unfairness of the situation, he confesed that from the 1,233 drugs that came into the market in the last 25 years aprox., only 13 were for tropical diseases that affect mainly the poor. Also known as the Gap 90/10, 10% of the global research budget is for diseases that cause 90% of the disease-burden. 40% of the population live in countries were malaria is endemic, and a person dies from malaria every 30'' (that's about 5 or 6 people dead since you started reading this entry!!!!!). Another negative effect of malaria, less obvious than the deads, is the economic slaughter it causes in already struggling countries. Alonso gave an estimate of $12 bilion/year for the money that has probably been lost in Africa due to malaria.

It's amazing how we've heard these things time and again, and we are shocked when we hear them (for the nth time), and yet, we keep on forgeting... Let's hope at least these 5 days of ESOF have help everyone reflect about the role of science in the world (all the world), and how we should help science help us.

(just to finish on a brighter note: after Alonso's interesting talk, Pep Bou came along, a Catalan architect, it seems, who currently earns his life and entertains huge audiences making impossible soap bubbles on a stage. Check the pictures!)

I'm running around like a headless chicken

2008-07-08T18:42:00.003+02:00

I can't believe it's been so long since I last wrote...!

Well, I have to run off again now, for the capoeira class that is starting in 20 mintues - it's been about a month now we are running these classes at the PRBB and they are a success - people who come are really enjoying them and they are getting to know each other well, which is one of the objectives of the classes!

But hopefully I will soon have time to tell you about some of the new Intervals courses that are happening here - really exciting stuff!

See you soon!

Our misunderstood friend the wind

2008-06-17T11:49:00.003+02:00

Here's a video in you tube. Very good add in favour of eolic energy!

What comes after a PhD?

2008-06-13T18:34:00.001+02:00

PhD students and young postdocs from all centres of the PRBB will have the opportunity to learn from first hand about some of the alternative career paths that lay in front of them.

Next Friday June 27th the Professional Guidance in Science day will take place. This is an initiative from the CRG PhD students, and it's goal is to offer the young researchers of the PRBB an overview of career options in science different to the usual one of continuing in academic research.

During the whole day (from 9 am to 5 pm) we will have speakers from different fields such as science communication, technology transfer and companies. We will allocate a great deal of the time to informal discussions and information exchange between the speakers and the young researchers.

Each speaker will give a short 30 min presentation followed by 10 minutes of questions. The presentations will focus on their experience: the training they've received and their professional trajectory up to the point where they are now, referring also what their job consists of, the ups and downs, required skills, the challenges they’ve been faced with and also career possibilities.

The first workshop of the PRBB Intervals programme, a success

2008-05-30T17:53:00.005+02:00

The intervals programme of the PRBB has just started. It offers PRBB residents “a break from their normal day to day work, to step back and reflect on the world in which they are embedded and to discuss and learn from each other by sharing ideas”, in words of Elinor Thompson, the organiser of the programme.

The activities of Intervals centre on two main themes:

- Skills and learning for a flexible future
- Biomedicine and Society

So far, a ‘media skills’ workshop took place, given by Eric May. He is American but lives in Germany, and has loads of experience in communication, especially on TV, including 20 years as an editor/producer for CBS in San Francisco.

The workshop was one day and we were about 10 people, mostly PhD students and postdocs (and me! I still don’t know how to define myself…). It was great, and we learned a great deal: about the importance of understanding the audience you are talking to; about how the media professionals and scientists are not that different after all…; how to react in a crisis situation (e.g. a TV interview in which you are suddenly accused of fraud in your research); about how to choose an effective sound bite (and what a sound bite actually is!  a 15-20 seconds stretch of interview that is chosen to be introduced into a news story or documentary. The most important thing is that it has to convey a whole thought); etc.

It was very practical and good fun, and I hope there will be more like this! All partakers participated very actively and I think they all took some good messages home. I certainly did.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Next date for the diary: Tuesday June 3rd (next week!!). Nobel Prize laureate Sir Harry Kroto will come to the PRBB to give a general talk on "Science, society and sustainability” in the morning. At 4pm he will continue with a seminar for PRBB residents, to show us how to communicate science in a creative way…

I won’t miss it!

A successful capoeira workshop with continuity

2008-05-27T15:46:00.004+02:00

I am very glad to say that the two-day capoeira workshop that took place at PRBB in May was very successful amongst the partakers. So much so that the movements and songs they learned felt too little and they all want to learn more about this Brazilian martial art. And they will, with the new capoeira regular classes that are being organised and that will start next June at the PRBB.

Capoeira classes will be once a week, from 7 to 9pm. The day is yet to be decided, but it's sure to be a lot of fun!!

Here's some pictures of the 'taster workshop'.

Heroine and other anecdotes of the brain

2008-05-27T15:25:00.001+02:00

Did you know that heroine was first synthesized and commerciased by Bayer in 1898 as the 1st non-addictive analgesic opioid? Yep!

Opioids are substances that contain morphine or morphine-like molecules and have therefore two main characteristics: they are very potent analgesics (they decrease the pain), but they are also very addictive. Since they were discovered about 200 years ago, pharmaceutical companies have always tried to find the ‘perfect analgesic’, with zero addiction problem. Bayer thought it had got it right 110 years ago, but nope: heroine turned out to be even more addictive than morphine!

To date, still no miracle analgesic exists, and the addiction problem is ever bigger.

Brigitte Kieffer, from the Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire in Strasbourg, gave a talk at the PRBB yesterday precisely about opioid receptors and how they affect brain function. She was involved in the cloning of the very first opioid receptor, and has done a lot of research into the subject since then.

She fave a nice historical talk and explained what she has found out about two of the three opioid receptor families: Mu and Delta. In a nutshell, Mu receptors are involved with the pain and reward mechanisms, while Delta is more related to emotional responses.

There’s so much more to be learned about this exciting subject. The brain is a mistery that we might never decipher completely…

A humanised mouse cell

2008-05-13T17:37:00.003+02:00

This image is by David Domínguez, a researcher from IMIM, and it shows a heterocarion, a fusion between a mouse and a human cell, dyed with three different colours. In the first image, in blue, we can see the DNA and the granular chromatin of the mouse nucleus, compared with the human. The second one, in green, shows the DNA which is replicating (both the murine and human), and in the last one we can visualise the cytoplasmic vesicles in red and the two nuclei in black.

The creation of heterocarions is used to study proteins that come in and out of the nucleus. In this case, mouse cells synchronised at the beginning of the cell cycle (G1 phase) were fused with human cells in S phase, during which DNA replication takes place. The mouse nucleus, in G1, does not have the factors needed for DNA duplication, but the human one, in S phase, does. After the fusion, these factors can travel from the human to the mouse nucleus, giving it the capacity to synthesize DNA, as we can see in the green image.

Sant Jordi celebration at PRBB

2008-05-09T13:26:00.010+02:00

Books and roses, but also ‘sardanes’, capoeira and rock and roll. This is what the nearly 200 people who participated in the Sant Jordi party at the PRBB could enjoy last April 22. And everything was done by the residents themselves. They brought the 275 books that were exchanged on the day; a collection of genre and language as varied as the PRBB community itself. And the residents organised also the shows that took place after the book exchange: a ‘sardanes’ workshop, the Catalan dance par excellence, and a ‘roda de capoeira’, a Brazilian martial art nowadays extended all over the world. In between the shows, sandwiches and drinks kept the public entertained. The final climax were the concerts by ‘ReStart’ and ‘Puri López’, two rock and roll groups in which Mara Dierssen (CRG) and Ferran (UPF) sing, respectively.

The Hospital del Mar also celebrated April 23 by publishing the Sant Jordi book of IMAS 2008. This was the 11th year of this initiative, which compiles narrative and poetry writing by professionals at IMAS. All together a very animated and colourful Sant Jordi!

** Sant Jordi is the patron of Catalonia - it's the equivalent of Saint George, on the 23rd of April, a very special day for all Catalan people!

*** Photos by Javier Sin

Actually, a lot of love

2008-05-08T11:55:00.003+02:00

The first café científico was a great succes!!! I could not be there, regretfully, but have been told there were about 130 people and they were all very interested and excitied about the topic, leaving their emails for follow up activities and giving lots of feedback. Well done everyone who helped in the organisation!

The coming cafés will be on June 10th (my birthday!) about transgenic food, and on July 1st about the human genome. Let's hope this success story is repeated!

Coffee, neurons and love

2008-05-02T16:31:00.006+02:00

What happens in our brain when we fall in love? Can science help us find Mr. Perfect? These and other questions will be answered next Wednesday May 7 during the first Scientific Café organised by the “Science meets Society” group, an initiative of PhD students and postdocs working at the CRG. Mara Dierssen, researcher at the CRG, Adolf Tobeña, psychiatrist at the UAB and Elena Crespi i Asensio, psychologist, will briefly introduce the neurobiology of falling in love. Later on, the audience will be able to ask all those questions that are in their brains. Come to the CCCB cafeteria in Raval (Montalegre 5) at 7’30pm and learn what happens in your neurons when you see that sexy person, all while enjoying a coffee.

Remember, next Wednesday May 7 at 7'30pm @ CCCB. See you there!

What are we?

2008-04-22T17:54:00.002+02:00

I’m just coming from a talk by Didier Raoult, who has come to the PRBB to give a seminar (this is part of the CRG-PRBB seminars, which happen about twice a week. They are open to everyone and usually bring very good quality speakers from outside the park, many from abroad).

He told us about what he has learned by studying Ricketsia genomics (Ricketsia is a family of intracellular bacteria that cause many diseases and are usually spread by arthropods). He said many interesting things, such as the idea that the most virulent species are not so because they have a ‘virulent factor’, but rather because they have lost some regulatory genes and are not able to communicate with their host and adapt to it. For example by not dividing when there’s no food, so instead they keep on growing and eventually kill the host.

But one amazing thing I learned, and I had never realised, is that we cannot call ourselves eukaryotes, as most of us would happily do. We are, actually, an ecosystem. For every eukaryotic cell in our body, we have at least 10 archaeal cells, and who knows how many bacterial cells. So we are actually closer to be a bacterium than an eukaryote! It’s a funny thought. He went further saying that even if we got rid of all our bacteria, archaea and virus, we would still not be a pure eukaryote, since the mitochondria in each of our cells are of bacterial origin. And removing the bacteria would also not do the trick – some genes involved in mitochondrial function are nowadays integrated in the human genome.

DNA rocks

2008-04-21T14:35:00.004+02:00

Millions of DNA molecules came out of the Espacio Moviestar marquee in little plastic tubes last April 10 and 11. Their owners had visited the PRBB stand at the “Live Research” fair organised by the PCB. About 1,300 people, mostly students between 14 and 20 from 36 different schools went to the fair to learn about how oceans move or how to use virtual reality to stimulate a brain affected by ictus. At the PRBB stand, Hagen Tilgner (CRG), Eneritz Agirre (UPF-GRIB) and myself explained to the assistants the Encode and Eurasnet projects, two international networks in which groups from the different centres at the PRBB work. The aim of these projects is, respectively, to catalogue all the functional elements of the DNA and to study alternative splicing at a genomic level. The participants showed a great interest in the research, demonstrated by the many interesting questions asked. However, the excitement they felt about the DNA extraction from their own saliva beat everything else.

p.s. I, however, did NOT manage to extract my own DNA... :(

PRBB scientists communicate science to young people from their own lab

2008-04-18T15:07:00.003+02:00

How does a laboratory look like? What is done there? How do people work in it? Many young people wonder about these issues, and scientists at PRBB are helping to answer their questions.

The CRG and CEXS-UPF have participated this year in the Escolab project (http://www.escolab.cat/), an initative in which scientists from Barcelona organize activities directed to students at high school in their own research centres, universities or companies. The IMIM, on the other hand, has continued with its own program, ACCÉS, which functions since 2005 by initiative of a group of researchers, and which has also the aim of spreading the scientific activity amongst high school students.

Yesterday was the last of the Escolab sessions organised by the UPF. High school students (ESO and “batxillerat”) of three different schools visited the PRBB facilities and saw how laboratories work and what research is done there. During the visit the students stopped at the confocal microscopy and genomics services, where the technicians in charge of them, Xavi Sanjuan and Roger Anglada, explained to them in a very clear way how this complicated techniques work. The participants could also observe some biological images. Fernando Giráldez then gave a very enthusiastic talk about developmental biology, with which he awakened the interest of many of the high school students who participated.

For the ESO students, a bit younger, there was another activity: a role game, in which they had to put themselves in the position of researchers who find themselves in front of an epidemic and have to discover its origin and propagation in order to stop in time. The game forced them to work in little groups of experts who have to cooperate to find a solution.

Escolab is driven by the Comissionat de Cultura científica de l’Institut de Cultura de Barcelona, with the collaboration of the Institut Municipal d’Educació de Barcelona.

New date on Tuesdays at the PRBB restaurant

2008-04-09T13:11:00.003+02:00

Place: PRBB restaurant. Date: one Tuesday per month. Time: 9’30-10am. We are talking about the “PRBB breakfasts”, a new series of informal talks which will take place at the above mentioned time and place. Their objective: to generate debates about general interest subjects and to create a greater interaction amongst all residents. The speakers will be either internal PRBB staff or external guests, and the participants will be able to enjoy a little breakfast with some coffee, juices, croissants, etc. The first appointment, attended by 94 people, was April 8th, when Elvira López, PPRR director of the PRBB, explained the activities programme for residents. Other planned ‘breakfasts’ will include the presentation of the new formation programme that the PRBB offers, that of the prbb.tv project, and other subjects such as recycling and sustainability in the park or the use of bicycles. Other subjects of interest for specific sectors that do not normally interact, such as the human resources departments of the different centres, will also be discussed.

PRBB participates at the “Live Research” fair

2008-04-08T13:41:00.002+02:00

What is the genome? How different is one person from another one and why? How can we generate more than 150,000 proteins from only 30,000 genes? These and other related questions will be answered by scientists from the PRBB centres next April 10 and 11 at the fair “Live Research”, organized by the Parc Científic de Barcelona (PCB). Around 1,600 visitors are expected in the sixth edition of this free science fair that aims to show the research taking place in the different centres and research institutions of Barcelona.

I will be there, so I hope to post some pictures and a summary next week. I will also tell you if I succeeded in extracting my own DNA...!

What's PET? Molecular Imaging service from the IAT

2008-04-04T10:20:00.005+02:00

The Institute of Advanced Technology (IAT is one of the most technologically advanced centres in southern Europe in molecular imaging such as positron emission tomography (PET and magnetic resonance. It was the first entity to be based at the PRBB in 2004, and it offers its services to the scientific community and the pharmaceutical industry.

PET, which is commonly used in oncology and neurosciences, consists on visualising molecules within the organisms in vivo thanks to the fact that these molecules are labelled with a radioactive isotope which emits positrons. It is used for the detection of tumours and the analysis of their development in response to treatment. In neurosciences it is useful for measuring the activity of new psychoactive drugs.

The IAT has a cyclotron (of 23 tons of weight) inside a bunker in the basement. The cyclotron is a particle accelerator that converts stable elements into radioisotopes, which are then transferred to the radiochemical laboratory. Once in the laboratory, the radiotracers (the molecules of interest with a radioisotope incorporated) are synthesized. The radiotracers are then administered to the patient or the laboratory animal, who is subjected to the PET or micro-PET, where the radiation emission is converted into an image in a non-invasive manner.

The IAT, currently with a staff of 22 people, is a non-for-profit foundation fostered by the ‘CRC Corporació Sanitària’ group, the Municipal Institute for Health Assistance (IMAS), the CLINIC Corporation, and the Foundation ‘Institut de Recerca Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron’.

Stem cells: generation and regeneration

2008-04-03T10:15:00.001+02:00

Stem cells are a hot topic - but what are they, exactely?

-----------------------------------

Every one of the millions of cells of the human body, with the exception of germ cells, contains the same DNA sequence, that is, the same instructions. In an embryo, at the initial steps of development, all cells are equivalent and can give rise to any type of cell. The so-called embryonic stem cells maintain this property indefinitely; this is why it is said they are totipotent (they can give rise to all types of tissue). How a full organism, formed by different types of cells, can be generated from a single cell is precisely what is studied in developmental biology. Stem cells are dividing constantly, giving rise to daughter cells which, at a given time, will activate their cellular differentiation program - marked by the activation of specific genes- and will become a specific type of cell: a cardiac cell, a skin cell, etc.

It is the totipotency of stem cells what interests scientists and the base of their future use in regenerative medicine, whose aim is to regenerate tissues, such as muscle, or to cure diseases such as Parkinson and Alzheimer. The idea is to transplant stem cells into the damaged tissue, and that these cells then generate new cells of the type that is needed.

Working with embryonic cells is an ethically controversial subject, and so scientists from all over the world are looking for new sources of stem cells. One possibility are the stem cells that can be found in the bone marrow. These adult stem cells are not able to generate all types of cells, but can differentiate into a variety of blood cells during their life. Scientists hope to be able to reprogram these adult stem cells so that, instead of generating only blood cells, they are able to generate any type of cells, as embryonic stem cells do.

Research at PRBB - Dr Maldonado's addiction

2008-04-02T17:03:00.005+02:00

Drug abuse and emotional disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are generating a serious social problem. This is why Dr. Maldonado’s neuropharmacology group at the CEXS-UPF studies the common biological mechanisms involved in these two phenomena. They focus particularly in nicotine, cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy, and in the possible mechanisms underlying the abusive consume of these substances.

Dr. Maldonado explains there are three factors to understand why some people become addictive and others don’t: drug consume (the quantity, the frequency, the mode); social and environmental factors; and individual vulnerability, which includes genetic factors. A classical example of the effect of the environment is how the American marines that were heroin addicts in Vietnam quitted easily once back at home.

In order to understand addiction and emotional disorders, the group, formed by 29 people from 4 different nationalities, uses different techniques: classical pharmacological strategies, using compounds that act on the nervous system receptors; ‘knock-out’ mice in which a specific gene has been deleted in order to understand its function; and animal models for behaviour studies which, according to Dr. Maldonado, are very complex but once they are established they allow a good prediction of what can happen in humans.

Dr. Maldonado highlights the discovery that specific components of the endogenous opioid system are a common substrate for different addictive behaviours as a major contribution of his group. His dream: that this knowledge gives rise to effective treatments for the addicts, who are people with a chronic disease, Dr. Maldonado emphasizes.

NO meat this week

2008-03-19T17:21:00.002+01:00

did you know that a cow produces an equal amount of greenhouse gas as a car driven 10.000 km per year!! Do this month's green thing (http://www.dothegreenthing.com): GO EASY ON MEAT

I am an addict

2008-03-14T16:20:00.001+01:00

The dopaminergic areas of my brain are activated, giving me a feeling of pleasure via the so-called reward system; the serotonin is kicking in, which explains my obsessive behaviour. And I am on “a high” of noradrenaline that causes me excitement and self-assurance. I am not a drug addict. I am just in love.

Yesterday I learned that the brain reacts in a very similar way when we take drugs than when we kiss our loved one. Mara Dierssen, a researcher at CRG, illuminated me and about another 100 people on this subject, during a talk at the Palau de la Virreina. This was the closing event of the Brain Awareness week, which is organised by the American Society of Neuroscience and celebrated in 60 different countries at the same time. In Barcelona, Mara has been for years in charge of organising a series of talks and other events (including concerts) during this week, in order to reach the public and teach them some of the things we know – and the many we still don’t - about the brain.

And so yesterday we learned that if one where to look at the brain areas of people in love (or at mothers filled with maternal love for their children) one would see that the areas where negative emotions come from are inactivated, and so are those related to social judgements. This is why our partner, or our children, are always perfect to our eyes, and nothing they do feels wrong (…up to a certain point, of course!).

There were many other interesting questions raised. For example, is infidelity genetic, or can it at least be explained chemically? Well, scientific studies show that a genetic difference between two types of very similar mice makes them have very different behaviours: the first type (that have a long version of a specific microsatellite) are very promiscuous, while the other ones (with a shorter version) are monogamous. Oxitocine is a hormone that was also higher in this last group. Scientists have shown that when oxitocine was inhibited in the monogamous mice, they did not recognise their partner anymore. On the other hand, adding the short microsatellite to promiscuous mice made them more sociable and more likely to stay with the same partner… although only in about 3% of these, this new ‘monogamy’ lasted for their whole life. In any case, don’t start making any plans... Mara pointed out repeatedly that no human extrapolations can be made, although it seems likely that, as all complex behaviours, infidelity might have some genetic element, as well as a very important environmental influence.

So what is, in essence, the secret to a long and stable relationship? A high level of oxitocine, plenty of dopamine… and a constant delivery of chocolates, flowers and sweet tender words!

The IMIM Foundation IMIM will manage the international project GEN2PHEN

2008-03-12T19:40:00.001+01:00

Due to their great experience in the management of complex projects and their reputation at an European level, the office formed by Carlos Díaz, Raquel Furió, Eva Molero i Nathalie Villahoz from the IMIM Foundation, has been selected to externally manage GEN2PHEN, an international project funded by the EC and coordinated by Leicester University (UK), in which 19 research institutions participate.

The aim of this ambitious project, with a budget of 12 M€ and a duration of 5 years, is to create technologies that help integrating the existing databases that show how gene sequences (genotype) contribute to the differences between individuals regarding disease, drug response and other characteristics (phenotype). This information will be very relevant for the future prognostic, diagnostic and treatment of several diseases such as cancer or cardiovascular diseases.

Pursueing the logic of life

2008-03-04T17:03:00.002+01:00

Ricard Solé, an ICREA group leader at GRIB and external Professor at the Institute of Santa Fe (US), aims to understand what the common laws of organization of both natural and artificial complex systems are. This 45-year-old Catalan scientist received the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona in 2003 for his studies on the complexity of language. Now, his team is part of PACE, an interdisciplinary group of European researchers trying to build a very simple artificial cell that is able to self-replicate and evolve under controlled conditions.

How would you define life?
The consensus is that life is a system far from equilibrium with the capacity of auto replicating and evolving. It needs a compartment that isolates it (the membrane), an information system to adapt to new conditions (for example DNA) and a minimal metabolism. These are the three basic processes, and several studies suggest that life defined as such is the only possible solution to get an auto replicating system.

So if we were to find life in other planets it would have these same characteristics?
We believe so. But at a practical level, it is interesting to create a model that does not evolve, that always does that for which it has been designed. So, we have also created models without information, unable to evolve.

Why creating an artificial protocell?
To begin with, being able to answer the big question that human beings have been wondering for centuries: is it possible to cross the border from inert matter to life? And there are also potential medical and technological applications, such as cells that can capture CO2 or create biofuel, or cells that can substitute liposomes for medical treatments.

It certainly has great potential, but it carries ethical and security implications…
The cells we are trying to create are very simple and totally artificial: none of the three elements they contain exist in the wild. We use artificial genetic material called PNA (peptide DNA), as well as special lipids for the membrane. And the only metabolic reaction they do is not found in nature. It consists in capturing the light and breaking a precursor molecule into two pieces: one will be part of the membrane, and one of the information system. Therefore, these cells could not live outside of a very controlled environment and do not represent any danger. Other groups, however, start with a living organism and eliminate the non-essential elements until they get to the minimal genome. These modified organisms come from living matter and therefore they would have more opportunities to survive in the wild… In any case, in PACE we have annual meetings about ethics to talk about these issues.

How old is this field?
It’s been years that people are working on it, but until recently it was nearly alchemy. In the last 4 years several groups have started working on this seriously. Now the theoretical models are complete and, experimentally, we have managed to combine all possible pairs of the three basic elements. I think the missing step to integrate the whole machinery can be done in 3 or 5 years.

Nature Chief Editor talks to master students in Barcelona

2008-02-29T15:19:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I attended a conference by Dr. Philip Campbell, Chief Director of Nature. The occasion was the inauguration of a Master in Scientific, Medical and Environmental Communication that is given by the UPF, and the title of the talk was “Communicating science to researchers, science's stakeholders and public”.

He raised some interesting points and mentioned some anecdotes that I think exemplify the importance of scientists communicating their work to society.

Example 1: A law was ready to pass in Switzerland (where the constitution can be changed if enough people ask for it in a referendum) to completely ban any type of GMO from the market. This was avoided only because scientists joined forces and created a lobby to start explaining to the public the benefits of GMO in some fields (such as medicine), to convince them, to make them understand why the job they were doing was important.

Point 2: how can the public treat uncertainty in science and yet maintain their trust in science? i.e. how can people believe in what scientists say and at the same time understand that nobody is actually sure that what they are saying is true? Should we (science communicators, be either scientists or journalists or others) not talk about the uncertainty part in order to avoid chaos and mistrust? He said no, and I totally agree. That would be a patronising attitude, and we should not treat the public as if they were stupid. They are perfectly able to understand – if WE are able to explain it to them properly – that biology or medicine are not exact sciences; that research means coming up with theories, finding evidence that supports them or goes against them and that there is contradictory evidence (life is contradictory, everyone can understand that!) and some theories or some experiments may take years to be proven or replicated (Philip mentioned an example of an experiment in angiogenesis that nobody was able to replicate for years, but that ended up proven to be right). And that despite this, research is good; that science makes the society advance; that it is good to know ‘the truth’, even if it is to find out later that it wasn’t exactly right; that step by step (and even if some of these steps are backwards) we are going in the right direction.

Idea 3: Philip said scientists should be more willing to make a stand about things that are important. He mentioned evolution vs. creationism, and for him evolution is not a theory anymore, but a fact, since we have now enough fossils to not have any big gaps in the evolutionary history explanation. Another example was climate change, and he directed us to a the website realclimate.org. This is website “about climate change by climate scientists”, in which scientists working in the field write comments, in an easy to understand way, about recently published papers related to climate change. This is to try to avoid misunderstandings or overstatements by the general media. Before these have a chance to change the story, real scientists give their expert opinion on the matter directly.

He talked about many other things but these were the three main messages I took home and wanted to share here. Be an active communicator, don’t be patronising, make a stand!!!

Harvard "joins" PRBB

2008-02-28T10:46:00.004+01:00

It is in everyone’s mouth that Harvard University faculty of Arts and Sciences has approved an open access policy for scholarly research. By default, research articles will be published on-line and available for free. The faculty member will retain copyright and can opt out of the system.

I am, of course, extremely happy to hear that. Harvard is a very high profile and prestigious university, and this policy will hopefully give the Open Access (OA) movement a big thrust.

As I have mentioned in a previous entry, we at the PRBB have been doing something similar for the last six years. Any person interested in the research taking place in any of the PRBB’s six public research centers has been able to search for all articles published by the 840 scientists associated with them. The approximately 550 papers published per year can be found through a search engine on the PRBB website that simply retrieves a free, immediately accessible PDF copy of the full-length article.

I am glad that Harvard has decided to take a similar step forward, and I hope that this is just the beginning and that people who want a wider, opener, more just and more sensible scientific knowledge dissemination will start to take a stronger stance for Open Access.

Cell division

2008-02-27T17:52:00.001+01:00

This is a photography by Luis Bejarano, from Dr. Isabelle Vernos’ group (programme of cell and developmental biology, CRG). SP5 confocal microscope from Leica.

Confocal microscopy allows to visualise the structures within a cell, in this case one that is about to divide into two daughter cells. The microtubules (the green filaments) organise the chromosomes (in blue) before sharing them out between the two daughter cells.

A code for translational timing is unravelled by CRG scientists

2008-02-26T12:14:00.004+01:00

DNA, mRNA, protein. This is the basic gene expression cycle, and an organisms’ wellbeing depends on its proper regulation in time and space. Scientists at the CRG have recently published in Cell a code that regulates how, when and in which amounts the mRNAs will be translated into proteins.

Some mRNAs – such as those implicated in oocyte maturation or synaptic plasticity – are stored until its time for their translation. There are three signals in the mRNA sequence that determine when it is ready to be translated. The scientists directed by Raúl Méndez have found a code that determines which combinations of these signals establish whether translation activation or repression will occur, as well as how and in which amount the mRNA will be translated.

To do this, they have used frog eggs, in which they studied 5 mRNAs that contained the three signals. By modifying their number and the separation between them they have defined which combinations give rise to which patterns of translational control. This could be confirmed with the help of Roderic Guigó (CRG) through a computational search for genes with these signals. In most cases (> 90%) the translation pattern was shown experimentally to be the one predicted by the new code. They also found that the specific pattern of each gene was conserved across 14 species. Also, using the code, the scientists were able to generate tailor-made translation patterns in synthetic mRNAs. “We are now wondering whether defects in the cellular machinery that reads the code could be implied in pathologies such as cancer”, says Méndez.

splicing - or how we generate more than 150,000 different proteins from about 25,000 genes

2008-02-15T19:24:00.001+01:00

Even though the human genome contains only about 25,000 genes, these can produce more than 150,000 different proteins, making the immense human complexity possible. One of the explanations for this contradiction is splicing, a molecular phenomenon that five research groups at the PRBB are studying.

And what is it about? It helps reading the genes. Genes, the instructions to create an organism, are formed by some bits that make sense (full sentences or exons), and bits that are nonsense (random words or introns). Splicing eliminates introns, facilitating the reading of the instructions. Understanding splicing is fundamental, because without it, having the sequence of all genes, (the human genome) would be like having a book and not being able to read it.

And how does splicing help increasing protein diversity? Thanks to alternative splicing. Different cells, or the same cell in different conditions, can decide to include or not a specific exon (sentence) in the final instructions of a gene, the protein. And this decision modifies proteins giving them different actions, even opposite ones. The fact is that we know that nearly 30% of genetic diseases, such as neurofibromatosis, are due to splicing problems.

It is still a mystery how and why cells decide whether to include or not a specific exon in a protein. What is known is that each gene can generate between 2 and 5 different proteins – the most extreme case known is the Dscam gene from Drosophila, which can generate up to 32,000 different proteins.

“Science should help creating a more sceptic society”

2008-02-11T16:01:00.000+01:00

I completely agree with the above sentence, one of the things Miguel Beato told me during an interview I did to him. If people understood the nature of science, of the scientific method, that nothing is ever set on stone but that to do research means to question everything that you thought you knew, that you can perhaps prove that something is wrong, but never, fully, that it is right. Then we would have far less problems with the overstatements of the media.

Here is a transcription of my interview to Miguel Beato, director of the CRG, which appeared in the PRBB journal ellipse:

----------------

Miguel Beato is one of the most internationally acclaimed researchers on the mechanisms of hormonal action, gene expression and breast and endometrial cancer. He studied Medicine at the Universitat de Barcelona in 1962. At a time where it was unusual to study abroad being so young, he left to Germany to do his PhD. There he lived and worked most of his life, until he came back to his country of origin nearly 10 years ago. A painting and photography lover, this self-taught scientist has helped to the creation of three research institutes: one in Germany, one in Seville, and the last one, of which he is currently the director, within the context of the PRBB in Barcelona: the CRG.

How did you become interested in science?
It runs in the family. My father was a gynaecologist, but also because due to the civil war he was not able to be a scientist, which was his real passion and the one he always tried to instil into me…

And you followed his steps…
Yes, I studied gynaecology and obstetrics, and I even worked in the Clinic he had in Burgos. Actually, in the two years I worked there I participated in about 500 labours! It was good fun, and I would have loved to be a male midwife. And it was an adventure, to get to the isolated villages sometimes I had to go by horse or donkey…

Why did you then decide to leave the practice of medicine?
I liked to dedicate time to my patients, but it was impossible, I had a minute and a half for each of them! So, I decided to go into a laboratory to do pathological anatomy, first in Madrid and then in Germany, where I did my PhD.

Why in Germany?
It was also due to a family tradition. My father did his PhD there, and met my mum there….

And from there, you moved to the US…
In the 70’s I went to Columbia, New York, where I stayed for 3 years, until I got an offer in Germany and I went back. This time I stayed there for nearly 30 years.

Why did you finally leave Germany?
After the German reunification there was a strong economic crisis. So I started looking for other things, ideally in a place with more light…

Such as Barcelona…
Well, first I created an institute in Seville and I also started other initiatives, but the most interesting thing was when Jordi Camí invited me to help them build the human biology faculty at the UPF. I thought it was a fantastic thing they were doing, it was an unsuspected project: a university that recruited internationally, not by the typical public official exams but instead by the objective selection of good candidates, etc. After this Andreu Mas-Colell, who was at the time the University Councilor, came with the idea of creating a basic research centre with a big critical mass next to the university. That was precisely what I wanted, so we created the CRG, which has since been an unforeseen chain of successes.

Which has been the best moment of your career?
The day I decided to come back to Barcelona.

What do you think of research in Spain and Catalonia compared with other countries?
Catalonia is better positioned than Madrid, despite its smaller critical mass, but the whole of Spain is in a quite bad shape, because most of the science is done by civil servants, and this way it cannot work. But I do believe that we are at an expansion point that, if all goes well, will help to put us in the place we belong to. We must stop consuming from the others and start producing knowledge ourselves. The culture of the 21st century is science. And society must advance along with science, so we scientists have the moral obligation of doing good science communication to the public.

What is the best thing about science?
The search for the truth. The most important thing that scientists can offer to society is their respect for the truth, the passion of the scientist who, when realising that he or she was wrong, is glad and says “now I am wiser”. The scientific method is what is important in science, that people learn to have an sceptical attitude towards reality.

PRBB news

September Ellipse edition

Ellipse d'estiu / Summer Ellipse

Weekly meetings for runners

New edition of El·lipse, June 2011: "Five years, five kilometres"

Premi Ellipse sobre la biologia de la memoria

New Ellipse edition (May 2011)

El premi El·lipse del PRBB s'apropa a la biologia de la memòria | Biocat – Biociències i innovació

The PRBB runner's club

El·lipse d'abril: El cervell, aquest gran desconegut

The biology of memory - what do YOU have to say about it for 1000€?

Cis-regulation and genome architecture during development, evolution and genetic diseases

Evolutionary medicine - understanding malaria drug resistance

Of sex and death

February issue of El.lipse - new format!

Life at its physical limits

New Ellipse edition (January 2011)

New Ellipse, December edition!

How to get your research published in the Financial Times

Comunicar Ciencia en Red (1)

Comcired

November edition of El·lipse now out!

Success of Open Day

European Science Journalists at the PRBB

Jornada de Portes Obertes al PRBB - Us esperem el 2 d'octubre!

Open Day at the PRBB - October 2, 2010!!!

Beach volley party at PRBB

II El·lipse Award for Science Popularization - it's now open!

You can now follow us from twitter, too!

The interview (premi ellipse)

¡Nieva en el PRBB!

Totipotent (premi ellipse) - ENGLISH

Totipotent (premi ellipse) - CATALÀ

"Once upon a time there was a cell" (premi El·lipse)

Mercadillo per Haití en el PRBB (II) en Flickr: ¡Intercambio de fotos!

With love from the PRBB...2500€ for Haiti !!

Solidarity at PRBB: Haiti II

Receptes pastissos solidaris/Solidarity cakes recipes

Solidarity at PRBB: Haiti

The PRBB at Flickr

New format of Cell papers - cool!

Letter to a young scientist

Happy new year!!

The major scientific discovery of the year according to PRBB researchers

Superquick update

More Intervals videos

"Parallel realities": giving voice to people with Down Syndrome

Fundraising for the Abruzzo earthquake

"The illusions of the brain" Fair in Barcelona

Presentation of the Health Impact Fund

What's behind our genes? Come to La Pedrera to know!

Making medicines accessible to the world's poor

A VERY special Sant Jordi: love is in the air!

The PRBB organizes two 'science popularization' awards

Theatre and science!!

“The world is ours””

Studying the effect of drugs in humans

Neurons derived from mouse embryonic stem cells

“Being a scientit is a way of life”

DNA uncovers your geographic origen

Molecular language: how cells communicate

The genome in a microchip

“Air pollution is a real health problem”

“Being a scientist is like playing football: when you work you play, and this keeps you motivated”

Lost in translation?

The life of a cell

Christmas lunch at the PRBB

Two million euros of the Marató will go to researchers at PRBB

Videos and podcasts by scientists at PRBB

Happy day

Open Day and: Water in Canada, not for all

On 4h of October, Science for everyone!!!!

ESOF - day 1

I'm running around like a headless chicken

Our misunderstood friend the wind

What comes after a PhD?

The first workshop of the PRBB Intervals programme, a success

A successful capoeira workshop with continuity

Heroine and other anecdotes of the brain

A humanised mouse cell