We’ve just had our paper on the role of neuropeptides in adult neural stem cell-extracellular matrix interactions published in ASN Neuro.

We went to see Ghost in the Shell as a lab last night. The movie was rather shallow, but visually stunning. Afterwards, we went bar-hopping to celebrate Łukasz’s new-born, Miłosz. Congrats, Łukasz! We were very disappointed that our favorite bar “U Mechaników” closed up, but we have a new go-to place – “Do Dna”.

We had cheese and grapes for brunch this morning after lab meeting. Great presentation by Sylwia!

We recently participated in a collaboration with the group of Dr. Gianluca Canettieri from Sapienza University in Rome, Italy, and the fruits of this collaboration have just been published in Scientific Reports. Congrats to the whole international team, especially the first author Sonia, and many thanks to Luca for inviting us to participate in this exciting study of HDAC1/2 in Hedgehog-driven cancer!

We went for a long overdue happy hour. This time instead of just going for a beer, we went to what is known as an “Escape Room”. We were locked in a room with many interconnected puzzles and the goal is to figure out how to escape from the room in less than 1 hour. The team worked extremely well – we managed to escape with around 10 minutes to go! We then went to celebrate to a pizza place in the Warsaw Old Town and some bar-hopping afterwards.

This is coming a little late, but our new lab members are here and really picking up steam! Warmest welcome to Sylwia – the new PhD student, and Edyta – the new research assistant. They don’t lack for motivation – everyone is here churning out results despite the slow holiday season. I wish everyone plenty of papers, grants, and awards in 2017!!!

I am back from the Vth Polish Genetics Congress in Lodz. Great thanks to Prof. Michał Witt for organizing a session on the genetics (and other aspects) of ciliopathies and for inviting me to give a talk. It was a very interesting session and gave me a fresh appreciation of the significance of cilia for human disease. Last, but not least, the congress get-together party at the famous Wytwórnia Club was fabulous – the DJ was the inimitable Marek Sierocki!

Julian Tuwim's statue in front of Wytwórnia Club

The get-together party in full swing

Selfie with Marek Sierocki

We’ve just returned from the beautiful city of Wrocław, where Łukasz, Mostafa, and myself participated in the Bio2016 joint conference of the Polish Biochemical Society and Polish Society of Cell Science. We saw a bunch of exciting talks, met many old friends and made plenty of new acquaintances. It was a fun time, and the weather was splendid despite it being mid-September.

The beautiful Grunwaldzki Campus of the University of Wrocław

The beautiful Grunwaldzki Campus of the University of Wrocław

Wrocław - the city of a thousand bridges (and a thousand church spires)

Selfie

Eagerly awaiting the next fascinating talk

The beautiful Wrocław Cathedral

At the Central Square (Rynek) of the old town

The Cathedral by night

Great news for the lab. Łukasz Markiewicz, who applied for a FUGA postdoctoral fellowship to work on Gli proteins, got the award and will be joining us this fall. Congratulations and welcome! Łukasz is sure to become a very valuable addition to our growing team.

For the last week we have hosted two extremely talented high school students in our lab as part of the “Fundacja na Rzecz Dzieci” summer program. Zuza has been showing them the ropes of western blotting, molecular cloning, and immunofluorescence microscopy. They tell me that they’ve had a lot of fun and I am not surprised – biology is facinating and Zuza is a wonderful mentor. Looking forward to my talk tomorrow – introduction to cell signaling for all our high school interns at CeNT.