The 7th Horizons in Molecular Biology Symposium

Much has been written about the “Horizons in Molecular Biology” PhD student symposia in previous years, always being a great success owing to the enthusiastic and professional organization by the Molecular Biology students, distinguished speakers enjoying a young and interactive audience and exciting student presentations. All of this was true, again, for the Horizons meeting and Career Fair on 27-30 September 2010 under the auspices of the Federal Minister of Education and Research Annette Schavan.

Several features, however, made the Horizons 2010 meeting a truly memorable one: As it took place in the same week as the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Molecular Biology and Neuroscience programs, many alumni attended the meeting this year. Some of them presented their current research in specially featured alumni sessions, others contributed to the program of the Career Fair for Scientists, sharing their experience with their juniors.

In addition to Carol Greider, who gave the scientific keynote lecture for the 10th anniversary a few days later, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan followed the invitation of the students and presented “Structural insights into decoding of the genetic message by the ribosome”.

Meeting laureates of both the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 during the same week was not only exciting for the organizing PhD students and participants of the Horizons meetings, but also for the new Master’s students who had just arrived a few days earlier. When Carol Greider discussed her travel plans with her neighbor Rachel Green before she left Baltimore, they found out that both had bought tickets for Göttingen – small world.

Peter Walter, best known not only for his research on organelle biosynthesis, membrane dynamics, and protein sorting, but also for the famous textbook “Molecular Biology of the Cell”, gave an exciting opening lecture on “How to succeed in science” at the Career Fair, as well as the scientific keynote for the Horizons meetings on “The unfolded protein response in health and disease“. He allowed us to print the e-mail, which he sent to the Horizons organizers after the meeting, in this newsletter (see next page). This leaves us with the concluding remarks that we fully agree with his appreciation of a wonderful meeting. Once again a big “thank you” to the organizers!

 Steffen Burkhardt

from Molecular Biology Newsletter, January 2011