6th Transposon Symposium held in Uppsala
Between 26-28th October, the 6th Uppsala Transposon Symposium was held in Uppsala. The event was a success as it gathered over 350 (100 on-site) researchers and company representatives from all over the world, including some key figures in the transposon research field. The symposium was organized by SciLifeLab fellow Claudia Kutter (Karolinska Institutet) together with Uppsala-based SciLifeLab affiliates Patric Jern and Alexander Suh.
Some of the big names in the transposon research field attended and presented their latest findings, such as US-based researchers Irina Arkhipova (MBL, UChicago), John Coffin (Tufts University), Alice Eunjung (Harvard Medical School), Arian Smit (ISB Seattle) and Kenji Kojima (CMMS). Björn Nystedt (SciLifeLab, NBIS) also demonstrated his impactful findings from his sequencing and assembly of the Norway spruce genome.
Many different topics were covered during the three days, including developments in identifying transposons and viral sequences in the genome of diverse organisms and the consequences of transposons and viral integration, accumulation or multiplication in their hosts. Panel discussions were held at the end of each day that initiated conversations between the experts and attendees (virtual or on-site), discussing the biggest challenges and opening up the horizon for future research and applications.
The last day of the event included an interactive workshop organized by Clément Goubert (McGill University) and Jessica Storer (ISB Seattle), where each participant learnt how to use (via virtual machines) cutting-edge computational tools to annotate, identify and functionally characterize transposons in the genomes of various organisms.
This symposium was financially supported by SciLifeLab, Wenner-Gren Foundations, Vetenskapsrådet (VR) and the Systematic Biology Program at Uppsala University. Computational resources for the workshop were provided by the NSF-supported ACCESS program.
The 6th edition of the Uppsala Transposon Symposium also showcased how closely the universities are linked (Uppsala University and KI) through SciLifeLab and demonstrated the major contributions and leading roles of SciLifeLab researchers (either affiliate, fellows or infrastructure support groups) to research, innovation and global networking. Several researchers from different research institutions around the world participated in the conference, both via Zoom (38) and in person (19).
Researchers with an interest in transposon biology can join real-time discussions on the TransposonWorldwide Slack channel.
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