April, 2007: The weather for MBC's Annual Retreat was fair but slightly damp, though not enough to dampen the enthusiasm of the participants. The retreat was held at the Turf Valley Resort for a second year. The program this year was done a little differently than previous years, allowing more time for interaction during the breaks and at lunch. Comments from participants and the difficulty in getting everyone to stop talking and reconvene for the speakers suggests that this worked very well. The program started with a welcome from MBC Director W. Jonathan Lederer, followed by three speakers from the MBC, Drs. Didier Brochet and Brian Hagen, both Research Associates from the Institute of Molecular Cardiology, spoke on the work they are doing on calcium signaling in heart and Assistant Professor Shengyun Fang, head of the Program in Cancer Biology, talked about a new protein recently discovered in his laboratory.

After a 45 minute break, the participants reconvened to hear MBC Professor Joseph Kao, head of the Program in Nanobiology, gave the group an update on his work in conjunction with Dr. Gerald Rosen on a new way to do bioimaging and Research Associate Natallia Makarava from the Program in Prion Biology discussed the program's latest work on prions. Next was our first guest speaker, Dr. Mordecai Blaustein from the University of Maryland Baltimore, who spoke on his work in calcium signaling. Dr. Blaustein is a long time collaborator of Dr. Lederer's and was the person who originally brought Dr. Lederer to work in Maryland.

A lingering lunch with an dazzling array of desserts continued the conversations started after the interesting presentations from the morning sessions. Upon reconvening, Dr. Lederer discussed the new imaging equipment that has recently been funded and some that is only in the planning stage for the MBC. He was followed by Dr. Michael Previte from MBC's Institute of Fluorescence who detailed a new faster approach to Western blotting, currently a standard technique but time consuming technique in molecular biology laboratories. That brought up our second guest speaker, Dr. Greg Melikian from the Institute of Human Virology who spoke on his work on viral membrane fusion with an emphasis on bioimaging.

After a break for cookies and fruit, the last session started with Dr. Hongmin Wang from the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases who is looking at the effect of the protein ubiquilin on diseases like Huntington's and Dr. Bruce Vogel, head of the Program in Cell Structure and Development who stressed the future directions his work on extracellular matrix proteins might take. The session was to close with a talk from Dr. Al Place from UMBI's Center of Marine Biotechnology, but he was delayed and could not make it in time. Rather than wait well beyond the expected end time, it was decided to have Dr. Place come for a regular seminar at the MBC at a later date.

Written by Pamela Wright