What to see at Physiology 2012

What to see at Physiology 2012

admin July 3, 2012

Next week sees the annual meeting of The Physiological Society, Physiology 2012, take place over four days in the beautiful city of Edinburgh (UK).

View of Edinburgh from Edinburgh Castle, photo: Kim Traynor, source: Wikimedia Commons

If you’re attending the meeting this year, here are Proteintech’s five ‘must-sees’ — selected by its resident blogger from the many talks, symposia and events of the 2012 program:

1. Annual Public Lecture

When : Tuesday July 3^rd, 6.30 pm

Given by Professor Gareth Leng, this year’s Annual Public Lecture at Physiology 2012 communicates the physiological basis of “The Loving Brain.” Leng’s work at The Centre for Integrative Physiology, based at The University of Edinburgh, uses a multidisciplinary approach to study neuronal circuits in the hypothalamus. A large core of this work has focused on how the hypothalamus regulates appetite and energy balance, and the role this area of the brain plays in obesity. However, the full title of the talk “The Loving Brain: Monogamy to maternity” would suggest it will be Leng’s other work — looking at the neural control of the pituitary — in the spotlight at his Physiology 2012 talk.

Read more:

The hormones released by the posterior pituitary gland, oxytocin and vasopressin (also known as anti-diuretic hormone or ADH), have well-defined actions on the peripheral organs of the body (e.g. circulating vasopressin increases water absorption in the collecting ducts of the kidney nephron). Yet there is a growing body of work documenting the release and direct action of these pituitary hormones within the brain: They are now thought to have fundamentally important roles in governing complex social behaviors. Read about the Leng lab’s interesting research on the role of vasopressin in social recognition published in Nature in 2010.

2. The physiology of space travel

When: Thursday July 5^th, 8.45 am – 12:30 pm

Within the Human and Exercise (HE) symposia at the meeting this year, one session in particular looks set to deliver something a little different: “From space station to terrestrial health: The physiology of manned space flight” .

Space travel being something most of us are unlikely to experience any time soon, why not go along to these talks to discover what happens to our bodies if we catapult ourselves at great speeds into the zero-gravity realms of space.

The physiology of space travel: Re-entry of the space shuttle Atlantis (the comet-like streak across the Earth’s atmosphere) on July 21, 2011 viewed from the ISS – what physiological changes did the crew on board experience on their journey? Image: NASA/ISS Expedition 28, source: Wikimedia Commons

3. Check out work featuring Proteintech antibodies!

If you like reading about work being done with our antibodies here at Proteintechblog.com and want to get more acquainted with it and the people behind it, we recommend you drop into the following sessions:

Catch Joern R Steinert and Nikita Gamper in Tuesday’s Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience (CI) symposium: “Activity-dependent modulation of neuronal excitability and action potential initiation.”

When: Tuesday July 3^rd, 8.45 am – 12.30 pm

Steinert contributed towards research recently appearing in Nature and featuring Proteintech’s GADD34 antibody. He is co-chairing the session as well as delivering a talk on “Nitric oxide – an activity-dependent regulator of neuronal intrinsic excitability.”

Gamper and colleagues used Proteintech’s anti-nucleoporin antibody Nup62 for work reporting the repression of the M channel subunit Kv7.2 in chronic nerve injury. The work featured in Pain in April 2011, with Gamper as corresponding author.

Other speakers who have used out antibodies include:

Flemming Dela is speaking in Tuesday’s Metabolism and Endocrinology symposium. (His work has featured Proteintech’s malonyl-CoA-decarboxylase (MCD) antibody.)

Nanduri Prabhakar delivers his research in Wednesday’s Cardiac and Respiratory Physiology symposium - he has published two papers featuring Proteintech’s anti-phospho-MARCKS antibody in the past.

Karl-Erik Andersson appears in Thursday’s Vascular and Smooth Muscle Physiology session, he has collaborated on awork that used Proteintech antibody anti-CYC1.

4. The Paton Prize Lecture

(One for enthusiasts of the Olympic Games)

When: Tuesday July 3^rd, 12:45 pm

If the physiology of exercise is your thing (or you simply feel like brushing up on exercise trivia for this summer’s coming sporting events) make sure you attend the Paton Prize Lecture given by Jere Mitchell. Mitchell is a clinical professor at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center whose research focuses on the cardiovascular response and adaptation to exercise as well as the neural control of circulation during physical exertion. Learn about the exercise pressor reflex — activated during muscle contraction — and its effects on heart function in his talk “Neural circulatory control during exercise: Early insights”. How and why this reflex is relevant to the study and improved treatment of heart failure and stroke may also feature.

5. How cool are ectotherm hearts?

When: Monday July 2^nd, 6pm

Ectotherms — the organisms that largely depend on external factors for regulation of their body temperature — turn out to be pretty neat model organisms for studying cardiac adaptation to fluctuating environments. Join Holly Shiels for the Glaxo Smith Kline prize lecture and find out what ectotherm hearts can tell us about the tolerances of cardiac tissue in varying conditions. Holly’s work has looked at a variety of species including bluefin and yellow fin tuna, rainbow trout, zebrafish, turtle, varanid lizards, armored catfish, swordfish and most recently the amphibious axolotl.