A very special celebration of Dr. John Atkins and his enormous scientific contributions in DNA and RNA recoding mechanisms, the EMBO Workshop on Recoding and the Diversity of Genetic Decoding was held in Bantry, Ireland, from 13-18 of May, 2024. Marla was one of the organizers of the meeting. Lucia was an invited speaker for the “Non-standard Proteinogenic Amino Acids” section. 

In November 2023, the Society for Redox Biology in Medicine had its annual conference hosted in Punta Del Este, Uruguay. From our lab, Marla, Briana and Lucia attended, each one presenting a poster. The conference served as an excellent venue to also meet other “selenophile” colleagues and lab alumnus Ligia Watanabe.

The traditional Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS) 2023 took place in Phoenix, AZ, on November 15-18. Undergraduate student Princess presented a poster on her findings on the adaptive thermogenesis of the BAT-Scly KO mice.

The 2023 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, was held in Washington D.C.,  attended by Daniel who shared his latest findings on the effects of stress hormones on the brain.

From September 24-28, several groups studying environmental and agricultural aspects of selenium biology gathered in Bangkok, Thailand, to discuss their latest findings. Marla and Lucia were invited speakers and gave talks on the 1st day of the conference. Lucia also chaired a session on the same day.

The Annual Meeting of the American Society for Nutrition was held in Boston, MA, from July 22-25. Marla and Briana presented posters on their advances in the role of selenium deficiency in cardiovascular function.

In sunny San Diego, the American Diabetes Association gathered to discuss latest breakthroughs in the path to disease prevention, therapy, and cure. Sydonie presented a poster on her latest comparisons between two human brown adipocyte cell lines, and their responses to selenium treatment in combination with adrenergic stimuli. 

The 9th International Selenium Conference, focused on Selenium in Chemistry, Biology and Medicine, was hosted by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, South Korea. Postdoc Daniel gave an invited talk on the newly discovered interactions between selenium, selenoproteins, and glucocorticoids.

For this year’s JABSOM Biomedical Symposium, we had several presentations coming from our lab. Sydonie, who was last year’s winner of “Best Poster” in this Symposium, had a poster with her latest results using the PAZ6 cells. Jessica presented her latest findings on the effects of glucocorticoid exposure on cultured mouse hippocampal cells. INBRE Intern and undergraduate senior Noa presented a poster on his phylogenetic analyses of SCLY. MARC fellow and undergraduate junior Princess had a poster on metabolic changes of the mouse lacking SCLY in brown adipocytes. Exciting!

This year, at the UH Tester Symposium, an annual celebration of Life Sciences at our University, our lab was represented by Briana, who gave a lightning talk, and Noa, who presented a poster.

Held in snowy Keystone, CO, in mid-January, the Keystone Joint Meeting – “Bioenergetics in Health and Diseases” & “Adipose Tissue: Energizing the Good Fat” was attended by Lucia, who presented a poster on SCLY and the activation of GPX4-independent ferroptotic pathways in brown adipose tissue. The meeting was organized by Dr. Shingo Kajimura (BIMDC, Harvard Medical School) who is a collaborator in Lucia’s grant.

The annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience was held in sunny San Diego and attracted over 30,000 attendees. Among them were two of our lab members: Jessica, who presented her data on glucocorticoid-induced vulnerability to ferroptosis in mouse hippocampal cells, and Pam, who presented her work on the impact of early life glucocorticoid exposure on the developing mouse brain.  

The 29th Annual Conference of the Society for Redox Biology and Medicine was held in November/2022 in Orlando, FL, and attended by Lucia, who presented a poster on ferroptosis in brown adipose tissue. The conference focus on redox biology broadened perspectives for our selenium work. Plus, the focus of several activities were in early-career investigators, trying to level-up knowledge in the field. 

The 1st Iron, ROS, and Ferroptosis in Life, Death, and Disease Meeting in Japan was attended by Briana and Jessica. Briana discussed her BAT data in an oral presentation and Jessica discussed her results on glucocorticoid effects on ferroptosis in a poster.