英文摘要
We arrived at Boston, MA, USA on July. 15th as scheduled. The conference was well-organized and most of the seminars and short presentations were interesting. We had attended most of the invited plenaries and seminars, as well as the short presentations that I was interested in. The poster sections also went smoothly. Many excellent works were presented in the poster sections arranged for three consecutive lunch time. Two posters from our lab were also displayed in the poster sections. Many responses and great
discussion had been raised about our data presented in the posters. I am encouraged to know that people also agreed that our studies are interesting and promising. After the conference, we drove to Richmond/Virginia for a visiting trip to our long-term collaborator Dr. Martin Safo’s lab in Virginia Commonwealth University. After the meeting, I went on for a personal trip in District of Columbia (DC) and New York city. I came back and arrived in Taiwan on July 30th. Overall, I felt greatly benefited from this conference and the meeting with Dr.
Safo and reenergized from the trip. I am really thankful for the support from MOST. Without the help, none of the above that I mentioned can be accomplished.
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We took Canada airline and Delta airline and flew from Tauyuan to Boston/MA as scheduled, by
transferring at Vancouver and Montreal/Canada since the they provided the flight from Taiwan to Boston with the schedule and route fitting most properly to our meeting schedule and budget. Boston, one of the most historical cities in US, was also the city held the 12th conference of Zebrafish Disease Model. Boston is a historical city with great history and stories about American constitution. The weather was nice and comfortable. We dwelled in a hotel with 30 minutes driving distance to the conference center during the period of meeting for the economical consideration.
The conference was held at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical Center, which was well-equipped for holding an international conference of this kind. The keynote speech and plenary talks were scheduled for every morning and afternoon during the conference period. On the other hand, the poster sections were scheduled for the noon during the lunch time. Two posters from our labs were among them.
Many responses and great discussion had been raised. Several PIs had showed their profound interests in what we found and the methods we used.
The conference for zebrafish disease model has always been a middle-sized
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meeting. There were about 400 people from all over the world attended this conference, including PI, post-doc and graduate students. This was a well-organized meeting. There were approximately 40~60 long and short talks presented and 250 posters displayed during these four days conference period. They covered many and various disciplines and fields related to modeling all kinds of human diseases with zebrafish, including cardiology, neurology, dermatology, infection and immunity, embryogenesis and organogenesis, behavioral defects, stem cell research, cancer, sensory system and drug discovery. Due to the limited time and number of participants in the meeting, the oral presentations were arranged and held as “parallel symposiums” (that means that the presentation were delivered at the exact same time slots at different meeting rooms). Most of
the talks and posters were informative
and insightful. I was also surprised to learn
that research in all kinds of diseases using
zebrafish models has sprouting in a pace
faster than I expected. I was amazed by the
fast and big progress has been achieved in
the techniques for zebrafish research,
especially the high-throughput
techniques and the so-called “nomic”
research. I told myself that I shall take
action with delay no more. There have been many state-of-art tools for drug screening and fish (embryos) imaging developed and these have no doubt speeded up the progress in of this field for life-science and medical research. I was especially impressed by the development of high-throughput in vivo platform for the cell transplantation (implantation) prototype. The two sections that I was especially looking forward to were chemically screening and diseases models, since those are related to what we are doing right now. The
experience and knowledge obtained in the meeting are certainly informative and helpful to me. I had also met and shared the experience with several researchers in our zebrafish society from Taiwan who also attended this conference. Many excellent works were presented in the poster sections.
The meeting ended at the afternoon of July 18th. Then we drove to Richmond, Virginia to pay a visit to
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our long-term collaboration Dr. Martin Safo in Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Martin Safo is a professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry/Medical College of Virginia, VCU and a X-ray crystallographer with his expertise in solving the structures of pyridoxal-5-phosphate (PLP; vitamin B6) enzyme. He is also a member of the Institute of Structural Biology and Drug Discovery, Virginia. Dr. Safo and his mentor, Dr. Verne Schirch, have been working on folate and PLP enzymes for more than 3 decades with many outstanding papers published. In fact, Dr. Schirch is also my advisor when I studied there. Together, we have published more than 10 papers with half of them having included significant contribution from Martin.
Currently, we are revising a paper with both Martin and I being the corresponding authors for re-submission to the journal of Frontier in Pharmacology. During our meeting, we had discussed about the revision of the manuscript, as well as planned out our future collaboration on testing the pyridoxine oxidase (PNPO) mutants with zebrafish B6 deficient model established in our lab. In addition, we plan to examine the biological
significance of Dopa Decarboxylase (DDC), another PLP enzyme that Martin and Verne are working on, with zebrafish in our lab.
More importantly, we had a wonderful reunion time together in Richmond that has further strengthened our friendship.
After the meeting in Richmond, we left for a 5-day trip in DC and New York city before heading back to Taiwan. This was indeed a fruitful and wonderful trip. It was refreshing, both for my spirit and scientific knowledge. I am much obliged for it.
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科技部補助專題研究計畫出席國際學術會議心得報告
日期：109 年 10 月 14 日
一、 參加會議經過
會議分為四個部分，第一部分為 vitamins for optimal health through all life stages，
第二部分為 modern and emerging methodology for metabolic bioefficacy，第三部分為 emerging vitamins in disease prevention，第四部分為 food vitamin methodology-content and bioavailability。第一部分請到的講者為prof. Ian Damton-Hill。 演講中指出全球根 據ＷＨＯ統計，大約有20億人是處於維生素缺乏的狀態，且大約有1.25億的未入學兒童是處於 vitamin A的缺乏狀態。而vitamin Ａ的缺乏可能導致視力及發育多方面的影響。如果必須要 改善這樣的狀態。需要透過包含公共衛生教育、推廣母乳、增加家庭種植蔬果、攝取均衡維生 素等等來減少維生素缺乏的人口。另一位演講者為prof. Carol Bower，他提出在澳洲有部分 的新生兒會有缺發葉酸的情形發生，而葉酸的缺乏會導致神經管閉合不全，造成胎兒死亡，而 他們透過大量給予葉酸，及建議孕婦多攝取穀物、麵包，成功使得澳洲境內神經管閉合不全的 胎兒數量下降。