Visitor of the Week: Nabil Karnib

Meet Nabil Karnib of Bowling Green State University. The Lebanese national is a PhD student in Robert Huber’s Lab and is presently taking part in the 2019 meeting of Neurobiology of Drosophila. Nabil “heard a lot of positive reviews [about the Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting] from colleagues and though he “underestimated the engaging aspect of it,” it was up to his expectations. Our biennial fly meeting is his first meeting at CSHL and his inaugural experience included a poster presentation. This wasn’t his first time presenting a poster, but it was the first time he presented his work to such a targeted audience. The result? “Everyone was engaged and enthusiastic about [his] work [so] the feedback [he received] was highly constructive and gave [him] a lot of ideas to incorporate in [his] project trajectory.”

What are your research interests? What are you working on?
I am interested in substance abuse, in particular what makes an individual more prone to get addicted to a certain compound. I use the Drosophila to understand the underlying mechanisms for this susceptibility.

How did you decide to make this the focus of your research?
The ability to answer complex behaviors in a relatively simple model that could be translated clinically.

How did your scientific journey begin?
I was always intrigued by behavioral neuroscience: the fact that any normal or maladaptive behavior can be tracked and studied with the appropriate tools. Particularly, tracing the resilient/susceptible phenotype to depression to underlying epigenetic and genetic mechanisms and studying behavioral abnormalities following hypoxic seizures marked the beginning of my career in science.

Was there something specific about the Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting that drew you to attend?
My main reasons for attending the Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting were to know the state of the art in this field and establish collaborations. CSHL and the organizers provided the best platform for this. I identified and approached laboratories doing similar and complementary work to ours, laying foundations for future collaborations. 

What is your key takeaway from the meeting?
Collaboration makes science happen.

What and/or how will you apply what you’ve learned from the meeting to your work?
I was introduced to several techniques during the talks and the poster sessions that would be a great asset for my project. Also, it was insightful to see how different groups tackle the same questions using different approaches.

If someone curious in attending this meeting asked you for feedback or advice on it, what would you tell him/her?
I would definitely encourage them to attend. It’s a congenial environment to give and receive feedback on science. I return to the lab with a new understanding of novel techniques and approaches to expand my repertoire. The topics covered a vast range, from basic scientific questions to disease modeling and technological innovations done at the highest levels. The heterogeneity of the topics along with the fast pace of the sessions made the meeting highly engaging.

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
The picturesque backdrop of Long Island, the chance to see the Big Apple and the new friendships I made.

Thank you to Nabil for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured scientists - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

A Word From: Heather Broihier & Troy Littleton

The seventeenth biennial Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meeting on the Neurobiology of Drosophila took place October 3-7, 2017. Serendipitously, the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced that same week and awarded to three Drosophila biologists – Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young – for their work in understanding circadian rhythms. We chatted with the meeting organizers Heather Broihier and Troy Littleton about fruit flies, the Nobels, and how both the meeting and the field have evolved in recent years.

Troy: This meeting, together with the European Drosophila neurobiology conference, are the only forums that bring the model system of Drosophila together with those who do neurobiology. Every other meeting in neuroscience or Drosophila either covers a broad range of topics outside of neuroscience or focuses on a variety of model systems. But we’re all tied together by the common tools we use in our field: even when people may not have a specific interest in a unique protein or a circuit, there are still common tools they’re using. There are so many ideas that happen from this meeting: it’s an excitement that brings a lot of people here.

Illustration: Niklas Elmehed, Nobel Media AB 2017

Heather: This is the most exciting meeting in our field and it’s really well-represented in terms of colleagues and topics. We had about 450 participants this time representing everything from the molecular genetic level all the way up to circuits and behavior. This year’s meeting was especially exciting for us because the 2017 Nobel Prize was awarded to scientists in our field on the same day the meeting started, for work that was actually initiated in Seymour Benzer’s lab. We had a Seymour Benzer Memorial Lecture this year given by Hugo Bellen, and so everything felt timely.

Troy: One of the big excitements in our field is that we span the gap from people who study single molecules all the way up to complex behaviors mediated by the large brain circuits. Being able to see the full range of science – how single molecules make the molecular engines that ultimately allow the animals to learn and behave, and studying how that’s represented across neural circuits – is really exciting. In that regard, this is a unique meeting because those in the circuit world get to experience the molecular world and vice versa. This meeting also keeps everyone abreast of the tools across both systems that help advance both fields.

Heather: There’s been a lot of tool building, especially out of Gerry Rubin’s group in Janelia. He gave a short talk on the unbelievable pace of innovation in the computational tools we have for putting together the fly connectome in the brain —for understanding how every neuron connects at a synaptic level. For many years, the implementation of the tools wasn't quite there yet. But amazing progress has been made to enable that kind of map in what Gerry thinks will be the next five years. It’s in collaboration with Google to get through the data analysis and enable these large datasets to be connected and compiled. I’m just blown away: this kind of work was not imaginable even five years ago. The talks in the circuits session really exploded this year, and there now seems to be a huge payoff from the tool development that has gone on in our field.

Troy: Technology is a big driver in our field. In prior years, we had technology talks that were organized into small subsections and, consequently, broke the community apart. This year, we decided to have one symposium dedicated to technological developments, so everyone was in the same room and heard about the great new tools coming out. It worked really well.

Heather: We weren’t the driving force behind this, but there was also a presentation this year about the 2017 Nobel Prize. It was given by attendees who had done scientific training in each of the three labs for which the Prize was awarded. They put together a really great presentation about the history of the work that provided the students and postdocs with a more immediate sense of that history. We all felt that our entire field was awarded the Prize.

Troy: The award really emphasizes that Drosophila as a model isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s a great system to understand core principles of behavior that have been conserved across evolution. The simple fly can tell us so much about basic biology and basic mechanisms of disease that have important benefits for human health.

A unique feature of this meeting are the Elkins Memorial and Seymour Benzer lectures:

Heather: The centrality of this meeting for our field is signified by the Elkins Lecture, which is an award given every two years for the best PhD thesis in Drosophila neurobiology. Troy directs the selection committee, and the winner gives one of the full-length invited lectures here at the meeting.

Troy: This year, we had 12 or 13 nominations that were just unbelievably great. It’s always a challenge to pick from the very, very best. Ultimately the selection committee – which includes former organizers of this meeting – considers the impact of an applicant’s work in the field. The 2017 Elkins Memorial Lecture was awarded to Raphael Cohn for his work on how the fly learning centers – the mushroom bodies – encode contextual information cues from the environment. It was spectacular, beautiful work that takes advantage of all the tool development and biology available up to this point.

Heather: It’s incredibly exciting that we have such unbelievably high-quality research going on in our field. This meeting really represents the best of our community.

Troy: The Seymour Benzer keynote lecture by Hugo Bellen was another high point of the meeting for me. Hugo highlighted how the fly might inform basic mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s – i.e., the links between defects and lipid metabolism in the fly that cause neurodegeneration, and the mouse or other models with ties to Alzheimer’s. For me, the twin pillars of basic science are 1) how something not related to disease works at a fundamental level, and then 2) how to take it to a different arena to inform core disease mechanisms. Both lectures this year were excellent examples of basic science.

Organizers of Neurobiology of Drosophila hold the role for only one iteration of the meeting. Here is what Heather and Troy did in 2017 to leave their mark on the meeting: 

Heather: Both Troy and I happen to be on the cellular/molecular side of the balance, so we included the meeting’s first ever Neuronal Cell Biology session. For the next iteration, the new organizers might have different interests and ways they want to highlight the strengths of our field, so it’s appropriate the organizer roles move to two different people.

Troy: It’s great to give other members of our community the opportunity to survey the field and make their own choices on what they feel are important things to bring to the meeting. Heather and I also moved the poster session to the evening and that actually turned out very well. People grabbed a beer from the bar and basically stayed as long as they wanted in the poster session.

In terms of who would benefit in attending the biennial meeting:  

Troy: There are benefits across every career level. We mostly selected junior scientists to give talks, so graduate students and postdocs get to expose the community to their work. It’s a great place for younger scientists to network with more senior people. Graduate students get to “sample” and meet with people from labs they might be considering for postdocs, and the same applies to postdocs who are beginning to go in the job market. And it comes full circle: the PIs see the junior scientists present fantastic work and we can encourage them to consider our labs for future training. Personally, I'm already cherry-picking who might fit well in my home institution and encouraging them to apply for faculty positions there.

Drosophila Neurobiology course, 1993
Can you find Troy Littleton?

CSHL also runs an annual summer short course in Drosophila neurobiology, and a large number of course participants regularly attend the Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting. In fact, Troy was a trainee in the course in 1993 and Heather was an instructor in 2009-2011! In celebration of the course’s 30th anniversary, a reception was organized during the meeting that was attended by more than 75 course alumni dating all the way back to the Class of 1989. (Check out the complete course "class photo" gallery.)

Heather: It was an outstanding way for our community to see the importance of that course. So many of us came through the Drosophila neurobiology course as students, instructors, teaching assistants, or invited speakers, so we feel tied to it. This meeting is a great way for a lot of us to get together and see old friends.

The Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting at CSHL offers a lot to every participant. Whether one attends to discover the latest technological developments, hear a presentation on the best thesis, meet new collaborators, reunite with old friends, or celebrate the Nobel Prize with peers from the field, this meeting is, as Heather said: “THE best meeting in the field!”

The meeting returns to the Laboratory in 2019; and information on our Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits & Behavior course can be found in this webpage. To gain an inside look into the course, be sure to read our Q&A with 2017 Course Alumnus Tayfun Tumkaya.

For more conversation with other meeting organizers, check out the rest of our A Word From series. 

Visitor of the Week: Ilse Eidhof

Meet Ilse Eidhof of The Radboudumc (Netherlands). The PhD student is part of the Drosophila Models of Brain Disorders Research Group led by Annette Schenck. A 2016 Drosophila Neurobiology course alumna, Ilse returns to campus for the 2017 Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting where she presented a poster.

What are your research interests? What are you working on?
I am interested in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, and use the fruit fly as the model to understand the mechanisms underlying these disorders. 

Was there something specific about the Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting that drew you to attend?
I have a number of reasons for attending this meeting. For one, I believe this meeting to be one of the greatest in Drosophila neurobiology and its long list of speakers consists of those who are absolutely the best in the field. In addition, this meeting provides a platform to interact with other Drosophila scientists; and I am particularly interested in new technological innovations that are presented and discussed here.  

What is your key takeaway from the meeting?
Mainly the current state of today's Drosophila research and which new tools and techniques I can incorporate into my own work.

How many CSHL meetings have you attended? How about CSHL courses?
This is the second meeting at CSHL I am attending; and in 2016 I was part of the Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits & Behaviors course. 

If someone curious in attending a future iteration of Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting asked you for feedback or advice on it, what would you tell him/her?
I would definitely recommend those interested in this meeting to attend because I believe it to be one of the biggest and greatest in the field. It covers a broad range of topics - from basic neurobiological questions to technological innovations and disease modeling - that there is basically a topic of interest for everyone. Plus, the overall quality of the research presented is quite amazing. 

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
I really like the open atmosphere at CSHL; and there are numerous opportunities to meet and interact with fellow scientists in the field. 

Thank you to Ilse for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured scientists - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course – go here. 

Visitor of the Week: Suguru Takagi

Meet Suguru Takagi of The University of Tokyo (Japan). A PhD student in Akinao Nose's lab, Suguru visits CSHL for the first time to attend the 2017 Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting where he presented a poster. 

What are your research interests? What are you working on?
My research interest is to elucidate the neural-circuit mechanisms that enable an animal to respond adaptively to a given sensory cue. I take advantage of cutting-edge toolkits to tackle this problem in collaboration with various experts in the field.

Was there something specific about the Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting that drew you to apply?
A number of people from our lab have attended the Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting and I have always heard that this meeting is wonderful. In addition, it is very inspiring to have the opportunity to actually talk with the speakers and presenters who I had only previously known from publications. 

What is your key takeaway from the meeting?
My key takeaway is the importance of cross-disciplinary interactions. The experience of gaining new perspectives during the many in-depth discussions I had regarding my work and my fellow attendees' work is fascinating.

How many CSHL meetings have you attended?
This is my first time attending a CSHL meeting, and it has been amazing so far!

If someone curious in attending a future iteration of the Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting asked you for feedback or advice on it, what would you tell him/her?
Just attend and join in on the meeting. It is a great opportunity to get some inspiration from all of those who work in this field.

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
The site is calm and cozy; with the beach being my favorite. I envy those who work here with nice scenery and facilities.

Thank you to Suguru for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured scientists - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course – go here.