Global COE Study Abroad Project
Yasuto Itoga（Integrated Biology Laboratories / Kokoro-Biology Group）
| Date | 2009.10.15-23 |
|---|---|
| Purpose | To participate in Neuroscience 2009 and poster presentation |
|
|
|
* Click to Zoom
Report
(Name) Yasuto Itoga
(Name of Laboratory) KOKORO Biology laboratory, Graduate school of Frontier Biosciences (Yagi Lab.)
(Destination) McCormick Place, Chicago, IL, USA
(Purpose) Presenting our recent work in the poster session and obtaining the latest information around our research
(Schedule)
10/15: Itami (Japan) → Narita (Japan) → O'Hare (USA)
10/16: Attended MCCS (Molecular and Cellular Cognition Society)
10/17-21: Attended Neuroscience 2009 (10/20: Gave a poster presentation)
10/22-23: O'Hare (USA) → San Francisco (USA) → Kansai (Japan)
(Results)
The annual meeting of Society for Neuroscience is the most famous and biggest academic conference about neuroscience in which about 30,000 researchers all over the world participate every year. This year, Neuroscience 2009 was held in Chicago. During the meeting, it was cloudy and rainy, so it was colder than I'd expected outside. On the other hand, I felt hot in the conference center, maybe because many researchers discussed with each other very passionately.
On Oct. 20th, I gave a poster presentation about the analysis of Protocadherin gamma (Pcdhg) conditional KO mice. Pcdhg is one of the clustered Protocadherin family, and not only our group but many groups all over the world have focused on clustered Protocadherin family because they are thought to be involved in generating neural diversity and organization in mammalian brains. In my poster session time, more people than I'd expected came to me and discussed and gave me some useful advice and comments. Especially, I was very glad to discuss with J. A. Weiner, who is one of the most famous researchers in the field of Pchdg research. We could exchange information about our own researches with each other. I was very surprised because our experiments were very similar but the results were a little different. In addition, I felt strongly that competition was very keen and I had to work much harder. In that respect, Neuroscience 2009 was a good chance for me to reconsider our research project.
Neuroscience 2009 was the first time for me to discuss abroad, and this is one of the most impressive events in my life.
Finally, I thank all the people who helped me, especially Masatoshi Nagata, and Masaru Kuwabara. Thanks to them, I could survive in Chicago. And, I also thank GCOE Program of FBS, Osaka University most sincerely for its invaluable financial support.
