Guse Lab

Molecular Basis of Coral Symbiosis

Emerging Models at ASCB 2017

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The ASCB|EMBO Meeting 2017 took place at the beginning of December in Philadelphia. It was the first joint meeting of two of the most influential international organizations, ASCB and EMBO, within the field of molecular cell biology.

After the bis success of last year’s special interest group on emerging models in cell biology, Bob Goldstein and Mansi Shrivastava organised again a similar session with a complete new line up of speakers including a talk about Aiptasia:

After the session, all speakers participated in a Q & A session where general topics concerning labs establishing and working with emerging models are facing: small scientific communities, difficulties in finding funding for painstaking but crucial technique development and finding the right journals for publishing. However, overall everybody agreed that emerging models are incredibly rewarding and encourage young researchers to give them a try. To continue the discussions and strengthen the community, all speakers and friends went out for food and drinks. All in all, a big success and I truly enjoyed my meeting participation and immersion into the constantly growing Emerging Models Community.

EMBO YIP PhD Course

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Each year EMBO YIPs organizes the famous PhD course for advanced PhD students from EMBO YIP labs. This year Philipp is one of those lucky students to participate. If you want to get updated on what´s happening there, please check out updates on Twitter.

So many things to celebrate!

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Let´s celebrate:

(1) Philipp got married: CONGRATULATIONS to him and Sarah, his beloved wife. Pictures of the wedding are still to come. For now I only have the lab present for the happy couple: Champagner glasses with some nerdy and/or fun hand-made engravings.

(2) Liz´s birthday: CONGRATULATIONS! Again, only pics of the awesome American style sweets without anybody actually eating them. Please note the arts 3-D effect of the cinnamon roles. In fact Liz herself had to do some serious pipetting that particular day but we left her some of that deliciousness of course.


School comes to COS

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Earlier this month, a group of children from the Marie Curie German/French pre-school visited COS. The visit was organised by Alexis Maizel and in total 5 labs from COS including us participated. Every lab gave a short general presentation, and then groups of 6-7 childrens rotated through 5 different stations to learn about DNA extraction, chromatography, plants and flies and anemones. Thanks to the help from Marie, Diana, Gideon and Victor the children had a fun time (at least that´s what it looked liked when I had a peek). Thanks so much for investing your time into educating the next generation.

PhD awarded to Iliona

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Iliona Wolfowicz is the first graduated PhD student from the Guse lab. Iliona defended her thesis last week at University of Porto “with distinction”. Congratulations Dr. Wolfowicz! We are looking forward for you to come back to Heidelberg to celebrate your big success.

COS Symposium 2017

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This year´s COS Symposium “Senses and Sensitivity” was a big success. We had an excellent line-up of international, national and local speakers covering a wide range of scientific topics. Both, Victor and Marie presented Guse lab posters at the poster session and the Symposium concluded with a BBQ thanks to COS group leader Lazaro Centanin who knows his Argentinian meat.

Japanese food: oishi!

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There is no need to say that Japanese food is absolutely delicious. We love the Soba noodle soups are at lunch during field work days, all kinds of tempuras, tofu dishes such as Agadashi tofu and the super fresh seafood. There are also many tasty fruits and veggies. The local citrus Shinquesar as juice and ice cream and the Goya bitter melon are our absolute favourite. The Okinawan islands have also many local specialties such as sahimi of many kinds of local fish, peanut tofu as well as (for people with good nerves) goat sashimi and pork knuckles. And let´s not forget the local Aguu pork which is served for example as a fantastic ginger pork set meal including sahimi, soup and seaweed. Oishi!

Ginger pork set meal

Goat Sashimi

Local fish

Seafood Sashimi

Field Work in Okinawa 2017

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This year, Liz, Diana, Philipp and Annika joined again our Japanese collaborators from the Hatta lab (Tokyo), Ueno lab (Okazaki) and Maruyama lab (Sendai) at Sesoko Marine Station on Okinawa to collect coral larvae for comparative experiments in the field. Coral were collected on the 1st of June around Sesoko island and transferred to the water tables. Over the next few days, night snorkelling to watch out for spawning on the reef right in front of the station started. As predicted by the team leader Masayuki Hatta, Acropora corals spawned during the night of the 6th of June and after a busy night of gamete collection and mixing sperm and eggs for fertilization, coral embryos developed into planula larvae which were used for experiments. 4 days after fertilization, coral larvae are ready to be ship and, after a fun night out with delicious Japanese food and beer at our favorite Izakaya in Nago City, our Japanese colleagues went back home to continue their experiments at their home institutes. The Guse lab continued to enjoy the snorkelling and working at Sesoko for another week trying to learn as much as possible about the natural coral reef habitats and rearing coral larvae and metamorphosed polyps. We also brought some coral babies home and hope to keep them happy and alive in Heidelberg. Anyways, we all hope to be back in 2018 to witness that amazing event of synchronous coral spawning induced by the lunar cycle that occurs only once every year.

The reef at Sesoko Marine Station

One of our main activities: snorkeling

Collected corals in water table

Coral are setting to get ready for releasing their gametes

Monitoring the spawning & collecting gamtes

Lab work during spawning night

Izakaya night to celebrate a successful coral spawning 2017

Annika Guse
Phone: +49 89 2180 74218
E-mail
Fakultät für Biologie
Großhaderner Str. 2
82152 Planegg-Martinsried
Germany