Interdisciplinary public engagement: untapped potential?

Public engagement projects developed by university-based academics tend to focus on specific academic topics. Yet, the problems and topics that our audiences want to engage with are broad, challenging, and can't be explained or solved by a single academic subject or expertise. In this article, we capitalise on our experience working with academics at the University of Oxford, and a workshop for public engagement professionals that we co-organised with the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement, to advocate for a novel approach: interdisciplinary public engagement (public engagement projects that bring together academics from several academic disciplines). We consider the potential benefits and the challenges of this approach and provide examples of how it is starting to be explored.

Drosophila Sas-6, Ana2 and Sas-4 self-organise into macromolecular structures that can be used to probe centriole and centrosome assembly.

Centriole assembly requires a small number of conserved proteins. The precise pathway of centriole assembly has been difficult to study, as the lack of any one of the core assembly proteins [Plk4, Ana2 (the homologue of mammalian STIL), Sas-6, Sas-4 (mammalian CPAP) or Asl (mammalian Cep152)] leads to the absence of centrioles. Here, we use Sas-6 and Ana2 particles (SAPs) as a new model to probe the pathway of centriole and centrosome assembly. SAPs form in Drosophila eggs or embryos when Sas-6 and Ana2 are overexpressed. SAP assembly requires Sas-4, but not Plk4, whereas Asl helps to initiate SAP assembly but is not required for SAP growth. Although not centrioles, SAPs recruit and organise many centriole and centrosome components, nucleate microtubules, organise actin structures and compete with endogenous centrosomes to form mitotic spindle poles. SAPs require Asl to efficiently recruit pericentriolar material (PCM), but Spd-2 (the homologue of mammalian Cep192) can promote some PCM assembly independently of Asl. These observations provide new insights into the pathways of centriole and centrosome assembly.

The Node and beyond-using social media in cell and developmental biology.

Traditionally, strong scientific communities have been at least partly built around physical proximity - either by members of the same department or institute, or through regular meetings and conferences. The online environment and the rise of social media platforms now make it easier to build virtual communities of geographically dispersed people with a common interest. In this article, we explore how such networks can be nurtured, focussing on the Node - a community blog for and by developmental biologists. We also discuss the value of social media outlets like Twitter in building and maintaining scientific communities online.

An interview with Paola Arlotta.

Paola Arlotta is a neurodevelopmental biologist based at the Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology in Boston, MA, USA. Her lab studies the birth, differentiation and assembly of neuronal circuits in the cerebral cortex with the aim of developing novel therapies for degenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases. Paola has recently become an editor for Development, and we asked her about her research and career, and her recent efforts to support women in science.

An interview with Enrico Coen.

Enrico Coen CBE FRS is a Project Leader at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, who uses a variety of approaches to study patterning and morphogenesis in plants. We met with Enrico at the Spring Meeting of the British Society for Developmental Biology, where he was awarded the Waddington Medal, to ask him more about his career and his passion for art and book-writing.

An interview with Cheryll Tickle.

Cheryll Tickle is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Bath, UK. She dedicated her long research career mainly to the study of limb development in the chick, and has received numerous awards for her contributions to science, including being elected a Fellow of The Royal Society and receiving a CBE from the Queen. This year the British Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB) has created a new award in her honour, the Cheryll Tickle Medal, to be awarded to a mid-career, female scientist for outstanding achievements in the field. We asked Cheryll what this award means to her and how science has changed during her career.

An interview with Abigail Tucker.

Abigail Tucker is a professor at King's College London, UK and her lab works on various aspects of craniofacial development - from basic, evolutionary and clinical biology perspectives. This year, Abigail will be awarded the first Cheryll Tickle Medal by the British Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB). We chatted with Abigail about her research, her commitment to public engagement and the challenges and rewards of working with emerging model systems.

An interview with Melissa Little.

Melissa Little is a Senior Principal Research Fellow at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Her lab has studied kidney development and regeneration for over 20 years, recently making notable advances in the generation of kidney organoids from human iPSCs. We chatted with Melissa about her career, her thoughts on the potential of the organoid and stem cell fields, and what she hopes to achieve during her guest editorship with Development.

An interview with Peter Lawrence.

Peter Lawrence, FRS, is a fly geneticist based at the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge. During his illustrious career he has carried out pioneering work on pattern formation and polarity, and his contributions have been recognised by many honours, including the Prince of Asturias prize with Gines Morata and election to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He is also an outspoken critic of the current scientific system and particularly how it affects young scientists. We recently had the opportunity to chat with Peter, and we asked him about the influence of his mentor Sir V. B. Wigglesworth, writing his first grant at age 65 and his time as an editor of Development.

An interview with Nipam Patel.

Nipam Patel is a developmental biologist based at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, where he uses a variety of organisms to study the evolution of developmental systems, from arthropod body plans to butterfly colouration. We asked him about his career and scientific interests, his role as an editor at Development, and his growing butterfly collection.

An interview with Mike Levine.

Mike Levine, director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, is a developmental biologist who has dedicated his career to understanding how gene expression is regulated during development. Some of his most significant research, such as the co-discovery of the homeobox genes and his work on even skipped stripe 2, was performed in Drosophila, but he has since branched out to Ciona intestinalis, which he is using as a model to understand how vertebrate features have evolved. We had a lively chat with Mike at this year's Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) meeting, where he was awarded the Edwin Grant Conklin Medal.

An interview with Lewis Wolpert.

Lewis Wolpert is a retired developmental biologist who, over his long career, has made many important contributions to the field, from his French Flag model and the concept of positional information to the famous quote that it is "not birth, marriage or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important time in your life." In addition to his scientific contributions, Lewis is also a prolific writer, from the textbook 'Developmental Biology' to books about popular science, religion and his battle with depression. Although born in South Africa, it was in the United Kingdom that Lewis spent most of his scientific career. We met Lewis at the Spring Meeting of the British Society for Developmental Biology, where he was awarded the Waddington Medal.

An interview with Caroline Dean.

Caroline Dean is a plant biologist based at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK. She helped to establish Arabidopsis as a model plant organism, and has worked for many years on the epigenetic mechanisms that regulate vernalisation, the process by which plants accelerate their flowering after periods of prolonged cold. We met Caroline at the recent Spring Meeting of the British Society for Developmental Biology. We asked her about her career, her thoughts on the plant field and being awarded this year's FEBS EMBO Women in Science Award.

An interview with Brigid Hogan.

Brigid Hogan is a developmental biologist who has worked extensively on the early stages of mouse development and is now unravelling the mysteries of lung organogenesis. She is the George Barth Geller Professor and Chair of the Department of Cell Biology at Duke University Medical Center. Brigid is also the winner of the 2015 Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) Lifetime Achievement Award.

An interview with Juergen Knoblich.

Juergen Knoblich is a senior scientist and deputy scientific director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. We met Juergen at the 56(th) Annual Drosophila Research Conference, where we asked him about his work in this model system and, more recently, on human cerebral organoids, and about his thoughts on recent technological developments and the funding situation.

A molecular mechanism of mitotic centrosome assembly in Drosophila.

Centrosomes comprise a pair of centrioles surrounded by pericentriolar material (PCM). The PCM expands dramatically as cells enter mitosis, but it is unclear how this occurs. In this study, we show that the centriole protein Asl initiates the recruitment of DSpd-2 and Cnn to mother centrioles; both proteins then assemble into co-dependent scaffold-like structures that spread outwards from the mother centriole and recruit most, if not all, other PCM components. In the absence of either DSpd-2 or Cnn, mitotic PCM assembly is diminished; in the absence of both proteins, it appears to be abolished. We show that DSpd-2 helps incorporate Cnn into the PCM and that Cnn then helps maintain DSpd-2 within the PCM, creating a positive feedback loop that promotes robust PCM expansion around the mother centriole during mitosis. These observations suggest a surprisingly simple mechanism of mitotic PCM assembly in flies.

Secreted Gaussia luciferase as a sensitive reporter gene for in vivo and ex vivo studies of airway gene transfer.

The cationic lipid GL67A is one of the more efficient non-viral gene transfer agents (GTAs) for the lungs, and is currently being evaluated in an extensive clinical trial programme for cystic fibrosis gene therapy. Despite conferring significant expression of vector-specific mRNA following transfection of differentiated human airway cells cultured on air liquid interfaces (ALI) cultures and nebulisation into sheep lung in vivo we were unable to detect robust levels of the standard reporter gene Firefly luciferase (FLuc). Recently a novel secreted luciferase isolated from Gaussia princeps (GLuc) has been described. Here, we show that (1) GLuc is a more sensitive reporter gene and offers significant advantages over the traditionally used FLuc in pre-clinical models for lung gene transfer that are difficult to transfect, (2) GL67A-mediated gene transfection leads to significant production of recombinant protein in these models, (3) promoter activity in ALI cultures mimics published in vivo data and these cultures may, therefore, be suitable to characterise promoter activity in a human ex vivo airway model and (4) detection of GLuc in large animal broncho-alveolar lavage fluid and serum facilitates assessment of duration of gene expression after gene transfer to the lungs. In summary, we have shown here that GLuc is a sensitive reporter gene and is particularly useful for monitoring gene transfer in difficult to transfect models of the airway and lung. This has allowed us to validate that GL67A, which is currently in clinical use, can generate significant amounts of recombinant protein in fully differentiated human air liquid interface cultures and the ovine lung in vivo.