ISAC Congress - Day 3

The ISAC continues and the Day 3 was for me mostly dedicated to the commercial exhibitors. The Exhibit Hall presents many interesting offers and we can see the rise of smaller companies that are providing very interesting and competitive instruments. From what concerns the plant flow cytometry world, where the Partec flow cytometers rule, tough competition may start to appear. Partec itself presented their latest offers in the lunch commercial tutorial, but later on, in a different post, I will make a more dedicate overview of which (new) instruments were presented in the congress that might be of interest to plant flow cytometrists. The Congress itself was not very attractive, i.e., after the extraordinary Sunday it came the more so... so Monday...

Some more ISAC photos

The Budapest Sportsarena, home of the ISAC Congress for 5 days:



The exhibit hall:


The main auditorium:

ISAC Congress - Day 2

The second day of the ISAC congress may well be remembered as one of the most interesting, despite three days are still to come.

The day couldn't have started better with the interesting parallel session on the "Advances in Flow Cytometry Instrumentation I" where I would like to highlight the innovative approach directed to increase the measurement rates of current flow cytometers, laser rastering. The session was pretty full has it can be easily perceived from the picture.

Further highlights from Sunday include the impact that cytometry has been having in Marine Microbiology, as impressively presented by Ger van der Engh, and the High-Throughput microscopy analysis of the cytoskeleton, showed by Ronald Vale.

The commercial tutorial given by Tree Star, Inc. on the FlowJo software and on what advanced features will be present in the upcoming versions of the software was also quite interesting.

However, the cherry on top of the cake (I hope that this expression also makes some sense in English) was Howard Shapiro talk by the end of the day. As usual, he guided us through the History of Cytometry with his nice, sometimes bitter, sense of humour that pleased all the audience. For the end, a new version of his famous poem, now renamed as "There Is A Business Like Flow Business", was presented, wonderfully accompanied by background music and his still nice voice.

Our poster on the FLOWer database presented in ISAC Congress 2008

ISAC Congress - Day 1

Today, the XXIV International Congress of ISAC started in the beautiful city of Budapest. As promoted in previous posts of the blog, right in early morning the first activity related to plant flow cytometry, the tutorial dedicated to the estimation of genome size in plants, took place. Due to the extra costs of such an activity together with the already high costs of the Congress, only two participants attended to the tutorial. So, it was one of those occasions where the tutors outnumbered the students/participants... what a luxury! More seriously, we were sorry that there were not more people interested in our area, but I must also say that our expectations were not so high, as most of the participants are from the biomedical field. In case you are interested in knowing what you've missed, you can download the presentation in pdf format at: http://rapidshare.com/files/115567579/Tutorial__final_.pdf.html

The poster that we bring to the congress is already mounted in its panel just near the entrance of the main room of the Arena, where the chaos still rules with all the commercial exhibitors preparing their booth's with their top products.

The Congress officially started in the afternoon with the Frontiers talks dedicated to some technological advances in cytometry and with the Keynote Lecture given by Dr. Lansing Taylor on the Evolution of Image Cytometry.

Now, it is time for the Opening Reception, a nice opportunity to meet other researchers while snacking and drinking some "traditional" Hungarian starters.

The ISAC congress is coming...

The XXIV International Congress of ISAC is starting already in the following 17th of May and I look forward for the event. I will make a daily report of the congress, accompanied by some documenting pictures. So keep tuned...

For your appetizing I will leave you with the advertising that will be made of one of the highlights in what concerns plant flow cytometry - the Workshop "Plant Genome Structure and Gene Expression". I hope that all the people in the picture are heading to the Budapest Sportsarena for the workshop. We do not mind the sporty clothes!

Dear ISAC Congress Attendee:

Jaroslav Dolezel and David Galbraith would like to invite you to attend Workshop 5 “Plant Genome Structure and Gene Expression” at the International ISAC Congress in Budapest. This workshop is scheduled for 15:45-17:15 on Tuesday, 20 May 2008, and will be held in the Red Room.

This workshop is aimed not simply at scientists interested in employing flow and image cytometry for the manipulation of plant cells, tissues, organs, and organelles. It also will provide valuable information for Operators and Core Managers having no prior experience with plant samples, who increasingly will encounter plant scientists interested in using their technologies and instruments in their plant-based research.

Topics to be presented and discussed will include:

• Preparation and storage of samples for DNA flow cytometry.
• Combating the negative effect of cytosol on nuclear DNA staining.
• Standardization for reliable estimation of nuclear genome size.
• Chromosome isolation and sorting.
• Analysis of gene expression, including flow analysis and sorting of organelles and large cells.

There will also be opportunities provided for questions, comments, etc., from the audience.

WORKSHOP PROGRAM:

Moderators: Jaroslav Dolezel (Olomouc, CR) and David Galbraith (Tucson, USA)

Short presentations on each topic will be given by:

• Jan Suda (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)
• Johann Greilhuber (University of Vienna, Austria)
• João Loureiro (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)
• Jaroslav Dolezel (Institute of Experimental Botany, Olomouc, Czech Republic)
• David Galbraith (University of Arizona, Tucson, USA)

Open Discussion will follow.

ISAC XXIV International Congress, May 17-21, 2008, Budapest, Hungary
http://www.isac-net.org/congress2008/

List of recently published papers on plant flow cytometry - April

As a usual section of our blog, you can find below the list of papers that came to our hands/knowledge during the month of April.

Genome size:
Nucleotypic effect
Francis D, Davies MS, Barlow PW. A strong nucleotypic effect on the cell cycle regardless of ploidy level. Annals of Botany (2008) 101:747-757.

Ecology
Sweigart AL, Martin NH, Willis JH. Patterns of nucleotide variation and reproductive isolation between a Mimulus allotetraploid and its progenitor species. Molecular Ecology (2008) 17:2089-2100.

Ploidy level:
Biotechnology
Ochatt SJ, Sangwan RS. In vitro shortening of generation time in Arabidopsis thaliana. Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (2008) 93:133-137.

Zale J, Ohnoutkova L, West D, Sams C, Biggerstaff J, Le Pull M. Micropropagation of field-grown perennial teosinte from node culture. Crop Science (2008) 48:651-655.

Soriano M, Cistue L, Castillo AM. Enhanced induction of microspore embryogenesis after n-butanol treatment in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) anther culture. Plant Cell Reports (2008) 27:805-811.

Leskovsek L, Jakse M, Bohanec B. Doubled haploid production in rocket (Eruca sativa Mill.) through isolated microspore culture. Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (2008) 93:181-189.

Biosystematics
Arndt S. Novelties in the Festuca valesiaca group (Poaceae) from the central Alps. Plant Systematics and Evolution (2008) 271:129-142.

Toxicology
Bakos F, Darkó E, Gáspár L, Ambrus H, Barnabás B. A cytological study on aluminium-treated wheat anther cultures resulting in plants with increased Al tolerance. Plant breeding (2008) 127:235-240.