General and Comparative Endocrinology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
General and Comparative Endocrinology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ygcen
Editorial
The special issue on the 17th International Congress of Comparative Endocrinology, (ICCE 2013) 1. Start and structure of the Barcelona 17th ICCE This special issue of GCE contains peer-reviewed papers from the 17th International Congress of Comparative Endocrinology (ICCE), held from July 15 to 19, 2013 in the School of Biology at the University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The papers provide a representative and balanced insight into the main developments in the discipline of comparative endocrinology at the molecular, cellular, organismal and population levels, in both fundamental and applied aspects. They have been selected by the editors and have all been peer-reviewed, guarantying a very high level of science and originality. The issue covers a wide range of actual topics and methodologies, and we hope that the research showcased here will have a strong impact in our field. We owe special thanks to Elsevier’s Shamus O’Reilly for his support of this publishing project, the Elsevier team for assistance, the editors for their guidance, the reviewers for their invaluable assessment of manuscripts and, of course, the authors for their contributions. The ICCE is organized every four years, under the auspices of the International Federation of Comparative Endocrinological Societies (IFCES). During the 16th ICCE 2009 in Hong Kong, organized by Fred Leung, the IFCES Council accepted the proposal of Joaquim Gutiérrez to organize the next edition of the Congress; the candidature of Barcelona (Spain) was presented to the General Assembly that approved it for the celebration of the 17th edition of the Congress. The Council also decided that its members would play an active role in devising the Barcelona ICCE program, as members of the International Program Committee (IPC). Soon after the ICCE 2009 event, the IPC started working on the main structure of the Congress. In close collaboration with the Local Organizing Committee, proposals were made for plenary and state-of-the-art lectures, symposia, and speakers, which were, after thorough evaluation and discussion, eventually approved by the IFCES Council. The lecturers of the prestigious Bargmann-Scharrer and Pickford Medalist Lectures were selected by the Council on the basis of a proposal made by a nomination committee chaired by Robert Denver. The 17th ICCE was attended by 353 scientists and 30 accompanying persons from 35 countries all over the world, with Spain, Japan, Italy, France, Canada, the United States of America, United Kingdom, Belgium and Portugal (ordered by number of participants) having more than 10 attendees. The scientific program included lectures, poster presentations, and workshops, and was enlightened by social events during the day and, mainly, during the evenings. Each day started with a plenary lecture, followed by a number of parallel scientific sessions. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ygcen.2014.03.031 0016-6480/Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Sessions concerned all main topics of comparative endocrinology, covering both fundamental and applied research data. Each session consisted of a state-of-the-art lecture and a symposium. A symposium was organized by invited specialists in the field, and included two state-of-the-art lectures and, in addition, two short oral communications that were presented by (mainly young) scientists, selected on the basis of their submitted abstracts that had been peer-reviewed by the symposium organizers and an IFCES selection committee. In the following, we will present some more detail about the congress, to revive for the reader the stimulating scientific and social atmosphere. 2. Science at the congress As an excellent introduction to the ICCE, the Congress was preceded by the celebration of the 9th Congress of the Iberian Association of Comparative Endocrinology (AIEC), which took place on Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th of July in the same University of Barcelona venue and that was splendidly organized by Isabel Navarro. The ICCE 2013 started Monday afternoon with the Opening Lecture entitled: ‘Discovery and evolution of gonadotropins and their receptors’, presented by Stacia Sower. During the Congress, five more plenaries were given: plenary lecture 2 was presented by Julian Dow, on ‘Post-genomic views on ion transport and osmoregulation in Drosophila and other insects’, plenary lecture 3, the Pickford Medalist Lecture, was entitled ‘Hormonal control of appetite and energy balance: new proteins, novel functions’ and was presented by Suraj Unniappan. Due to very sad circumstances, the Bargmann-Scharrer Lecture ‘Breakthrough in neuroendocrinology by discovering novel neuropeptides and neurosteroids’ could not be given by Kazuyoshi Tsutsui, to whom we would like to express our sincere condolences. We are grateful that in his absence, Hubert Vaudry, Yoshio Takei, Takayoshi Ubuka and Shogo Haraguchi took over to present Kazuyoshi’s lecture. Plenary Lecture 5, on ‘Signaling within the mammalian circadian timing system’ was given by Ueli Schibler, whereas the closing plenary lecture, dedicated to the memory of Howard Bern, was held by Yoshitaka Nagahama. It was entitled: ‘Molecular mechanisms of sex determination and differentiation in fish’. The ICCE 2013 included 18 scientific sessions. The first two were on Evolution and Development, organized by Dan Larhammar and Robert Dores (sponsor: GCE), and by Ina Arnone and Maurice Elphick, respectively. State-of-the-art lectures were by Robert Denver and Marek Jindra.
2
Editorial / General and Comparative Endocrinology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
The session on Control of Reproduction was organized by Angela Lange and Oliana Carnevali, and that on Sex Determination and Sex Differentiation by Shin-Ichi Abe and Yoshitaka Nagahama. The state-of-the-art lectures were by Manuel Tena-Sempere and Taisen Iguchi, respectively. Environmental Stressors and Homeostasis and Environmental Regulation of Endocrine Activity, were sessions organized by Tamás Kozicz and David Lovejoy, and Elisabeth Eppler and Wei Ge, respectively. Alon Chen and John Wingfield were the respective state-of-the-art speakers. The session on appetite and energy balance was organized by Gert Flik and Nicholas Bernier, with Gert Flik as the state-of-theart speaker. The Endocrine Disruptors session was organized by Caren Helbing, Werner Kloas and Alberta Mandich, and the state-of-the-art lecture was given by Peter Thomas. Ian Orchard and Yoshio Takei organized the session on Water and Mineral Regulation with a state-of-the-art lecture presented by Ian Orchard. The sessions on Metabolism, and Peptides and Signaling were organized by Thomas Moon and Sergio Polakof, and John Chang and Anderson Wong, respectively. Yoshio Takei and José CerdàReverter were the corresponding state-of-the-art speakers. Kazuyoshi Tsutsui and Hubert Vaudry organized a session on Neuroendocrinology/Steroids and the Brain, and Olivier Kah was the state-of-the-art speaker. In the session on Metamorphosis, organized by Xavier Belles, Klaus Hartfelder and Laurent Sachs, the latter was also the state-of-the-art speaker. Behavior and Biological Rhythms, and Growth were the last two regular sessions, organized by Horst-Werner Korf and Helmut Wicht, and Mark Sheridan and Jaume Pérez-Sánchez, respectively. State-of-the-art speakers in these sessions were, respectively, Kyungjin Kim and Cunming Duan. In addition, three special sessions on new techniques and approaches were held. The first was on Functional Genomics and Proteomics, organized by Janine Danks and Samantha Richardson, with Liliane Schoofs as a state-of-the-art speaker. The session Tools in Comparative Endocrinology was organized by Pei San Tsai and Stacia Sower, with Carol Elias as the state-of-the-art speaker. Finally, in Applied Comparative Endocrinology, organized by Geoff Coast and Ronald Nachman, the state-of-the-art lecture was presented by Núria Montserrat. During the Congress a high number (175) of posters were presented in two sessions, session I from Monday until Wednesday morning and session II from Wednesday afternoon until Friday. The sessions were linked to corresponding oral sessions. On the basis of suggestions made by the IPC, the local organizers programed 6 workshops dedicated to areas not covered by sessions. These events permitted free discussions and exchanges of ideas and techniques by as many participants as possible. Like the oral and poster sessions, the workshops were very well attended. A seventh workshop, on Publishing, was organized by Elsevier and chaired by Elsevier’s Shamus O’Reilly and the editors-in-chief of GCE, Deborah Power and Robert Dores. During the closing ceremony the Awards of the Congress were given. They included two awards for the best oral communication (for Kelly Cotter and Rik Verdonck), two awards for the best poster (for Cynthia Lenaerts and Joshua Pemberton), and one award for the best abstract, kindly provided by GCE-Elsevier (for Osamu Nishimiya). Also, the winners of the IFCES logo contest, Francesca Panatta (Oliana Carnevali) and Pei San Tsai were honored. 3. Social program and business matters The social program formed an important pillar of the Barcelona ICCE. The Congress started on Monday evening with a get-together.
Next day, a guided visit to the main building of the Universitat de Barcelona gave the opportunity to learn about the beautiful heritage of this University with a history of more than 550 years. Furthermore, excursions were made to Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia and the panoramic Barcelona, to Montserrat and its sanctuary, and to the Freixenet cellars and the coastal village of Sitges. The Congress dinner took place on Thursday July 18th in the exclusive venue of La Font del Lleó, where the exquisite Catalan cuisine was enjoyed with in between entertaining speeches, and ended with music and dance. But also business had to be done. During the meeting of the General Assembly, grants covering the registration fee were provided to 10 young scientists. Furthermore, the IFCES Council modernized its bylaws, and renewed its composition, thanking the leaving councilors, and welcoming the newcomers. As to the IFCES Officers, President Eric Roubos was succeeded by Vice-President Robert Denver, who, in turn, was succeeded by Kazuyoshi Tsutsui. Secretary-Treasurer Horst-Werner Korf resigned, and was succeeded by Nicholas Bernier. Importantly, the Council also approved the proposal made by Hamid Habibi and his colleagues to organize the 18th ICCE in Chateau Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, from June 4–9, 2017. 4. Conclusions The local organizers are very proud that IFCES has given them the opportunity to organize the ICCE 2013, and we are very grateful for the excellent result, as appears from the high number of participants, the high level of the science presented, and this very Special Issue of GCE. In the end, this is all due to the participants of the meeting. We thank them for coming to our School of Biology at the University of Barcelona and providing us with their support. We hope that they are satisfied with the way we did our job. Our special gratitude goes to the International Committee, which was never tired of giving suggestions, advices and solutions. We hope that reading this issue will give you much pleasure. And as for the ICCE: See you all at the 18th ICCE in 2017, another great meeting in the privileged surroundings of Lake Louise! Acknowledgments This Congress could not have been organized without the generous support from IFCES, Elsevier, the Universitat de Barcelona, Xarxa de Referència en Aqüicultura, BioRad, Office Depot, Bachem and Michelson (Prize & Grants). We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all of these, as their contributions allowed us to organize a Congress with the level of quality our discipline of Comparative Endocrinology deserves. We also acknowledge Mondial & Cititravel Congresos for their invaluable support in organizing many non-scientific aspects of the Congress, and the same holds for the numerous people from the Universitat de Barcelona and CSIC who contributed to the technical and social aspects of the meeting. We also like to thank Eric Roubos for his tremendous efforts in organizing the ICCE 2013 meeting, and other events of IFCES. He has done a great job as a President of the International Federation as he previously did in the European Society of Comparative Endocrinology, also as President and with other charges in the Council. Only a few people have made such an important dedication and contribution to the International Societies of Comparative Endocrinology and we take the opportunity now to recognize it and to express him our sincere gratitude. Thanks Eric. In our view, a main reason of the success of the Barcelona ICCE was in the close collaboration between the International and Local
Editorial / General and Comparative Endocrinology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
committees. Together they always found the best options or alternatives, still keeping the focus on generating a meeting in which the most important aspects of Comparative Endocrinology would be highlighted, with special emphasis to novel approaches and discoveries by young scientists, because the future of Comparative Endocrinology and related disciplines is in their hands!
3
Joaquim Gutiérrez Encarnación Capilla Isabel Navarro Local Organizers of ICCE 2013, Department of Physiology and Immunology, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Gutiérrez)
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
General and Comparative Endocrinology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ygcen
Editorial
The special issue on the 17th International Congress of Comparative Endocrinology, (ICCE 2013) 1. Start and structure of the Barcelona 17th ICCE This special issue of GCE contains peer-reviewed papers from the 17th International Congress of Comparative Endocrinology (ICCE), held from July 15 to 19, 2013 in the School of Biology at the University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The papers provide a representative and balanced insight into the main developments in the discipline of comparative endocrinology at the molecular, cellular, organismal and population levels, in both fundamental and applied aspects. They have been selected by the editors and have all been peer-reviewed, guarantying a very high level of science and originality. The issue covers a wide range of actual topics and methodologies, and we hope that the research showcased here will have a strong impact in our field. We owe special thanks to Elsevier’s Shamus O’Reilly for his support of this publishing project, the Elsevier team for assistance, the editors for their guidance, the reviewers for their invaluable assessment of manuscripts and, of course, the authors for their contributions. The ICCE is organized every four years, under the auspices of the International Federation of Comparative Endocrinological Societies (IFCES). During the 16th ICCE 2009 in Hong Kong, organized by Fred Leung, the IFCES Council accepted the proposal of Joaquim Gutiérrez to organize the next edition of the Congress; the candidature of Barcelona (Spain) was presented to the General Assembly that approved it for the celebration of the 17th edition of the Congress. The Council also decided that its members would play an active role in devising the Barcelona ICCE program, as members of the International Program Committee (IPC). Soon after the ICCE 2009 event, the IPC started working on the main structure of the Congress. In close collaboration with the Local Organizing Committee, proposals were made for plenary and state-of-the-art lectures, symposia, and speakers, which were, after thorough evaluation and discussion, eventually approved by the IFCES Council. The lecturers of the prestigious Bargmann-Scharrer and Pickford Medalist Lectures were selected by the Council on the basis of a proposal made by a nomination committee chaired by Robert Denver. The 17th ICCE was attended by 353 scientists and 30 accompanying persons from 35 countries all over the world, with Spain, Japan, Italy, France, Canada, the United States of America, United Kingdom, Belgium and Portugal (ordered by number of participants) having more than 10 attendees. The scientific program included lectures, poster presentations, and workshops, and was enlightened by social events during the day and, mainly, during the evenings. Each day started with a plenary lecture, followed by a number of parallel scientific sessions. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ygcen.2014.03.031 0016-6480/Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Sessions concerned all main topics of comparative endocrinology, covering both fundamental and applied research data. Each session consisted of a state-of-the-art lecture and a symposium. A symposium was organized by invited specialists in the field, and included two state-of-the-art lectures and, in addition, two short oral communications that were presented by (mainly young) scientists, selected on the basis of their submitted abstracts that had been peer-reviewed by the symposium organizers and an IFCES selection committee. In the following, we will present some more detail about the congress, to revive for the reader the stimulating scientific and social atmosphere. 2. Science at the congress As an excellent introduction to the ICCE, the Congress was preceded by the celebration of the 9th Congress of the Iberian Association of Comparative Endocrinology (AIEC), which took place on Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th of July in the same University of Barcelona venue and that was splendidly organized by Isabel Navarro. The ICCE 2013 started Monday afternoon with the Opening Lecture entitled: ‘Discovery and evolution of gonadotropins and their receptors’, presented by Stacia Sower. During the Congress, five more plenaries were given: plenary lecture 2 was presented by Julian Dow, on ‘Post-genomic views on ion transport and osmoregulation in Drosophila and other insects’, plenary lecture 3, the Pickford Medalist Lecture, was entitled ‘Hormonal control of appetite and energy balance: new proteins, novel functions’ and was presented by Suraj Unniappan. Due to very sad circumstances, the Bargmann-Scharrer Lecture ‘Breakthrough in neuroendocrinology by discovering novel neuropeptides and neurosteroids’ could not be given by Kazuyoshi Tsutsui, to whom we would like to express our sincere condolences. We are grateful that in his absence, Hubert Vaudry, Yoshio Takei, Takayoshi Ubuka and Shogo Haraguchi took over to present Kazuyoshi’s lecture. Plenary Lecture 5, on ‘Signaling within the mammalian circadian timing system’ was given by Ueli Schibler, whereas the closing plenary lecture, dedicated to the memory of Howard Bern, was held by Yoshitaka Nagahama. It was entitled: ‘Molecular mechanisms of sex determination and differentiation in fish’. The ICCE 2013 included 18 scientific sessions. The first two were on Evolution and Development, organized by Dan Larhammar and Robert Dores (sponsor: GCE), and by Ina Arnone and Maurice Elphick, respectively. State-of-the-art lectures were by Robert Denver and Marek Jindra.
2
Editorial / General and Comparative Endocrinology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
The session on Control of Reproduction was organized by Angela Lange and Oliana Carnevali, and that on Sex Determination and Sex Differentiation by Shin-Ichi Abe and Yoshitaka Nagahama. The state-of-the-art lectures were by Manuel Tena-Sempere and Taisen Iguchi, respectively. Environmental Stressors and Homeostasis and Environmental Regulation of Endocrine Activity, were sessions organized by Tamás Kozicz and David Lovejoy, and Elisabeth Eppler and Wei Ge, respectively. Alon Chen and John Wingfield were the respective state-of-the-art speakers. The session on appetite and energy balance was organized by Gert Flik and Nicholas Bernier, with Gert Flik as the state-of-theart speaker. The Endocrine Disruptors session was organized by Caren Helbing, Werner Kloas and Alberta Mandich, and the state-of-the-art lecture was given by Peter Thomas. Ian Orchard and Yoshio Takei organized the session on Water and Mineral Regulation with a state-of-the-art lecture presented by Ian Orchard. The sessions on Metabolism, and Peptides and Signaling were organized by Thomas Moon and Sergio Polakof, and John Chang and Anderson Wong, respectively. Yoshio Takei and José CerdàReverter were the corresponding state-of-the-art speakers. Kazuyoshi Tsutsui and Hubert Vaudry organized a session on Neuroendocrinology/Steroids and the Brain, and Olivier Kah was the state-of-the-art speaker. In the session on Metamorphosis, organized by Xavier Belles, Klaus Hartfelder and Laurent Sachs, the latter was also the state-of-the-art speaker. Behavior and Biological Rhythms, and Growth were the last two regular sessions, organized by Horst-Werner Korf and Helmut Wicht, and Mark Sheridan and Jaume Pérez-Sánchez, respectively. State-of-the-art speakers in these sessions were, respectively, Kyungjin Kim and Cunming Duan. In addition, three special sessions on new techniques and approaches were held. The first was on Functional Genomics and Proteomics, organized by Janine Danks and Samantha Richardson, with Liliane Schoofs as a state-of-the-art speaker. The session Tools in Comparative Endocrinology was organized by Pei San Tsai and Stacia Sower, with Carol Elias as the state-of-the-art speaker. Finally, in Applied Comparative Endocrinology, organized by Geoff Coast and Ronald Nachman, the state-of-the-art lecture was presented by Núria Montserrat. During the Congress a high number (175) of posters were presented in two sessions, session I from Monday until Wednesday morning and session II from Wednesday afternoon until Friday. The sessions were linked to corresponding oral sessions. On the basis of suggestions made by the IPC, the local organizers programed 6 workshops dedicated to areas not covered by sessions. These events permitted free discussions and exchanges of ideas and techniques by as many participants as possible. Like the oral and poster sessions, the workshops were very well attended. A seventh workshop, on Publishing, was organized by Elsevier and chaired by Elsevier’s Shamus O’Reilly and the editors-in-chief of GCE, Deborah Power and Robert Dores. During the closing ceremony the Awards of the Congress were given. They included two awards for the best oral communication (for Kelly Cotter and Rik Verdonck), two awards for the best poster (for Cynthia Lenaerts and Joshua Pemberton), and one award for the best abstract, kindly provided by GCE-Elsevier (for Osamu Nishimiya). Also, the winners of the IFCES logo contest, Francesca Panatta (Oliana Carnevali) and Pei San Tsai were honored. 3. Social program and business matters The social program formed an important pillar of the Barcelona ICCE. The Congress started on Monday evening with a get-together.
Next day, a guided visit to the main building of the Universitat de Barcelona gave the opportunity to learn about the beautiful heritage of this University with a history of more than 550 years. Furthermore, excursions were made to Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia and the panoramic Barcelona, to Montserrat and its sanctuary, and to the Freixenet cellars and the coastal village of Sitges. The Congress dinner took place on Thursday July 18th in the exclusive venue of La Font del Lleó, where the exquisite Catalan cuisine was enjoyed with in between entertaining speeches, and ended with music and dance. But also business had to be done. During the meeting of the General Assembly, grants covering the registration fee were provided to 10 young scientists. Furthermore, the IFCES Council modernized its bylaws, and renewed its composition, thanking the leaving councilors, and welcoming the newcomers. As to the IFCES Officers, President Eric Roubos was succeeded by Vice-President Robert Denver, who, in turn, was succeeded by Kazuyoshi Tsutsui. Secretary-Treasurer Horst-Werner Korf resigned, and was succeeded by Nicholas Bernier. Importantly, the Council also approved the proposal made by Hamid Habibi and his colleagues to organize the 18th ICCE in Chateau Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, from June 4–9, 2017. 4. Conclusions The local organizers are very proud that IFCES has given them the opportunity to organize the ICCE 2013, and we are very grateful for the excellent result, as appears from the high number of participants, the high level of the science presented, and this very Special Issue of GCE. In the end, this is all due to the participants of the meeting. We thank them for coming to our School of Biology at the University of Barcelona and providing us with their support. We hope that they are satisfied with the way we did our job. Our special gratitude goes to the International Committee, which was never tired of giving suggestions, advices and solutions. We hope that reading this issue will give you much pleasure. And as for the ICCE: See you all at the 18th ICCE in 2017, another great meeting in the privileged surroundings of Lake Louise! Acknowledgments This Congress could not have been organized without the generous support from IFCES, Elsevier, the Universitat de Barcelona, Xarxa de Referència en Aqüicultura, BioRad, Office Depot, Bachem and Michelson (Prize & Grants). We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all of these, as their contributions allowed us to organize a Congress with the level of quality our discipline of Comparative Endocrinology deserves. We also acknowledge Mondial & Cititravel Congresos for their invaluable support in organizing many non-scientific aspects of the Congress, and the same holds for the numerous people from the Universitat de Barcelona and CSIC who contributed to the technical and social aspects of the meeting. We also like to thank Eric Roubos for his tremendous efforts in organizing the ICCE 2013 meeting, and other events of IFCES. He has done a great job as a President of the International Federation as he previously did in the European Society of Comparative Endocrinology, also as President and with other charges in the Council. Only a few people have made such an important dedication and contribution to the International Societies of Comparative Endocrinology and we take the opportunity now to recognize it and to express him our sincere gratitude. Thanks Eric. In our view, a main reason of the success of the Barcelona ICCE was in the close collaboration between the International and Local
Editorial / General and Comparative Endocrinology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
committees. Together they always found the best options or alternatives, still keeping the focus on generating a meeting in which the most important aspects of Comparative Endocrinology would be highlighted, with special emphasis to novel approaches and discoveries by young scientists, because the future of Comparative Endocrinology and related disciplines is in their hands!
3
Joaquim Gutiérrez Encarnación Capilla Isabel Navarro Local Organizers of ICCE 2013, Department of Physiology and Immunology, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Gutiérrez)
