Annual Drosophila Research Conference, 2008

The Drosophila Research Conference, a yearly meeting organized by the Genetics Society of America (GSA), serves as a platform to present the latest developments in research using the Drosophila melanogaster model. The meeting provides fruit fly researchers an opportunity for interaction and exchange of ideas pertaining to their research. The 49th Annual Drosophila Research Conference took place in San Diego, California, one of the best tourist destinations famous for its great weather and miles of sandy beaches. The meeting was organized by Nanci Bonini (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), Susan Celnikar (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California), Brian Oliver (NIDDK, NIH, HHS, Bethesda, MD), and John Tamkun (University of California, Santa Cruz). This fly meeting was attended by nearly 1,500 Drosophila researchers from all over the world, who were treated to amazing presentations in 18 platform sessions encompassing 136 talks, 13 workshops, and around 1,000 posters on a broad spectrum of biomedical topics. The meeting opened with a welcome and opening remark from Susan Celnikar. It was followed by Larry Sandler Memorial Lecture by Adam Friedman from Norbert Perrimon’s group, HHMI at Harvard Medical School. The president of Drosophila board Utpal Bannerjee (University of California, Los Angeles) gave a memorial tribute to his mentor Seymour Benzer who died at the age of 86 on Nov. 30, 2007. Seymour, a highly accomplished geneticist and neurobiologist, made history by discovering that genes were structured like words. He went on to do pioneering work on the ties between genes and behavior, memory, and longevity. The historical keynote address was delivered by Antonio Garcia-Bellido, a scientist who specializes in genetic regulation of development and differentiation. A student of the noted British entomologist Sir Vincent Wigglesworth, GarciaBellido started his studies of cell heredity and determination as a postdoctoral fellow with Ernest Hadorn at the University of Zurich, and subsequently at Cal Tech with future Nobel Laureate Ed Lewis (1996). While at Hadorn’s lab, Garcia-Bellido mastered the method of culturing imaginal disc cells of Drosophila larvae in the abdomen of sterile adult females and exploited its unique advantages for studying the properties of imaginal disc cells of mutants of the bithorax complex (BX-C). Garcia-Bellido’s talk covered major landmarks of his journey through the field of Drosophila genetics and development. The first plenary session opened with the presentation of the 2008 Image Award. The Image Award is an initiative to recognize the most striking image that clearly conveys an important biological result. Eric Lecuyer (University of Toronto, Canada) received the 2008 Image Award for the image “Global Analysis of mRNA localization.” Lecuyer et al. conducted a high-resolution FISH analysis of approximately 25% of mRNAs encoded in the Drosophila genome to assess the overall variety and prevalence of mRNA localization events on a genomic level. They found that the majority of sampled mRNAs (71%) are subcellularly localized and that transcripts with similar localization patterns are often functionally related. The two runners up were S. Silver for the image “A microRNA that can activate Wingless signaling,” and G.S. Jefferis for the image “Mapping Pheromone and Fruit Odor Representations.” Interestingly, science and art came together at the San Diego meet-