Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Chromaffin Cell Biology

Abstract

It is our pleasure to present to the audience of neurobiologists, neuroendocrinologists, and cell biologists the Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Chromaffin Cell Biology (ISCCB) as a Special Issue of Journal of Molecular Neuroscience. The goal of the ISCCB is to promote high-quality neuroscience research using chromaffin cells as a biological model, to exchange ideas between laboratories with complementary methodologies, to foster scientific strategies, and to bring together senior and junior neuroscientists. The meeting provides a forum for the gathering of international scientist working in the field of chromaffin cell biology to discuss new ideas and challenge old ones and to foster collaboration. The 16th ISCCB was held in the Xinhua Hotel (north of Peking University) in Beijing, China, during July 11–15, 2011. A total of 120 researchers and students (65 from overseas and 55 from China) from all over the world attended the meeting. The meeting received more than 110 abstracts. Following ISCCB tradition, 11 travel awards were given to support young students to the meeting. Most of the financial support to ISCCB-16 for the fellowships, as well as the meeting hall cost came from a generous donation by Zeiss Microscope Division-China. We also received support from the National Science Foundation of China. For the first time, the ISCCB took place in China. The 4day symposium had 13 scientific oral sessions and two poster sessions covering 14 topics ranging from mechanisms of secretory granule biogenesis and transport, exocytosis/endocytosis to chromaffin cell plasticity and graninderived peptides in diseases. The names of the speakers and the scientific program can be found at the ISCCB website (http://www.ciccst.org.cn/isccb16/). A special session to increase the interest of Chinese junior scientists to work in the field of chromaffin cell biology was organized and chaired by L-S Kao. These researchers presented papers representing various aspects of study, directly or indirectly related to chromaffin cell biology. This included Pingyong Xu (China) who showed a series of exciting newly developed, reversibly switchable fluorescent proteins with high photon output, high photostability and different switching rate and pH dependence that are potentially useful for superresolution microscopy and applicable to chromaffin cells; and Zhengxin Wu (China) who discussed Ca imaging results that suggested a PKC-1-dependent mechanism for the on/off responses of ASH neurons to aversive stimuli in Caenorhabditis elegans. Xiao Yu (China) showed that thiopentalinduced insulin secretion via activation of IP3-sensitive calcium stores in rat pancreatic beta cells. Alan Schneider (USA) discussed the possibility that electroporation is part of the mechanism in fusion pore formation in chromaffin cells. Like previous meetings, there was a business meeting of all ISCCB international advisory board (IAB) members Y. P. Loh (*) Section on Cellular Neurobiology, Program on Developmental Neuroscience, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA e-mail: lohp@mail.nih.gov