Andrew Morton
University of Edinburgh

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.88.11

On 2 July 2012, the Centre for Integrative Physiology at the University of Edinburgh hosted the Young Physiologists’ Symposium as a satellite event to Physiology 2012. Fittingly for the venue, and in an effort to include a diverse audience of young physiologists from across the spectrum of topics covered by The Physiological Society, we made integrative physiology our theme. In three sessions, our programme progressed through multiple levels of investigation of physiological systems, from cellular physiology, to physiology in tissues, networks and circuits, concluding with in vivo and systems physiology.

More than 120 delegates squeezed into Hugh Robson Building to participate in the packed schedule of talks and poster presentations. The standard of presenting and audience engagement was fantastic throughout. This made our lives easier as session chairs, but very difficult as judges of the competitions for best talk and poster.

At our drinks reception, in accordance with long-standing Physiological Society tradition, the women cleaned up: Louise Hickey, The University of Bristol, won our image competition with her beautiful image ‘The great wave of neurones’; the prize for best poster went to Melina Figueiredo, also of The University of Bristol; the award for the best talk went to Julia Schiemann of the University of Edinburgh.

In her fantastic talk, ‘An exciting in vivo function of K-ATP channels in dopamine midbrain neurons is potentiated in Parkinson Disease’, Julia did an incredible job of presenting more than six years’ worth of elegant experiments from her time at Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany, in just 10 minutes.

Melina’s poster, ‘Novel optogenetic tools for control of astrocytic [Ca]i’ described neat methods for targeting a calcium translocating channel rhodopsin to the endoplasmic reticulum, allowing optical control of calcium release from internal stores in astrocytes.

And so it was that a great wave of young physiologists emerged from the Young Physiologists’ Symposium to join the body of the kirk at Physiology 2012.

YPS2012: Integrative Physiology was organised by myself, Peter Duncan, Amira Mahmoud and Steph Barnes, all PhD students at Centre for Integrative Physiology, The University of Edinburgh.

In addition to the support of The Physiological Society, we would like to thank the following external sponsors: Wellcome Images, Vector Laboratories, Axiope, Digitimer, World Precision Instruments, Dunn Labortechnik, Quadratech and New England Biolabs.