International Meeting on Left-Right Asymmetry hosted at RIKEN BDR

The RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) co-hosted the 75th Yamada Conference^*1 entitled, “Origin of left-right asymmetry in animals," at the Kobe Campus from January 24 to 27, 2023. The Conference was organized by Hiroshi Hamada (Laboratory for Organismal Patterning, RIKEN BDR), Martin Blum (University of Hohenheim, Germany), Stéphane Noselli (Institut de Biologie Valrose, France), and Cliff Tabin (Harvard Medical School, USA). There were 96 registered participants from within Japan and from countries abroad including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, China, Malaysia, and Singapore, in attendance at the meeting, which was the first international meeting held at BDR since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Each day of the four-day conference focused on a different theme related to left-right asymmetry in animals, with “Symmetry breaking in vertebrates” on day 1, “Signaling and organogenesis in vertebrates” on day 2, “Diversity of left-right asymmetry in among organisms” on day 3, and “Origin of Chirality” on day 4. The meeting program included two keynote talks by Nobutaka Hirokawa (The University of Tokyo, Japan) and Cliff Tabin (Harvard Medical School, USA), 28 talks by invited speakers, and 13 talks from scientists selected from submitted abstracts, and poster sessions. While a rare cold snap that hit Japan during the Conference disrupted the public transportation system causing a minor hiccup to the program by delaying the start of the talks on the second day, it did not take away from the enthusiasm of the participants in their discussions.

In the closing remarks, Martin Blum shared with the audience that the idea of holding this conference on the theme of left-right asymmetry arose from discussions among the organizers of this Yamada Conference when they met at the ISDB (International Society of Developmental Biologists) Meeting held in Singapore in 2017. He also thanked Hiroshi Hamada for taking the lead in organizing the conference in Japan.

The Conference wrapped up with heartfelt remarks by meeting participants to Hamada, who will be retiring from RIKEN BDR later this year, recognizing him for his seminal work discovering the lefty gene expressed in the left side of early mouse embryos, which helped pave the way for research of left-right asymmetry, and he was also gifted a cookbook, flowers and a T-shirt signed by the meeting participants.