The International Conference on Frontiers in Comparative Endocrinology and Neurobiology 2014, under the auspices of the Indian Society for Comparative Endocrinology (ISCE), organized by the faculty members of the Department of Animal Biology and School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad, was inaugurated on, 24th November 2014 at School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad. The conference has gathered various scientists, research scholars and students from India as well as abroad.
The Inauguration was presided over by the Pro-Vice Chancellor, UoH Dr. E. Haribabu.
The first session of the conference commenced with a Keynote lecture by Prof. Kazuhiro Ikenaka, from National Institute of Natural Sciences, Japan. His lecture focused mainly upon the role of secretory factors, their roles as morphogens in the patterning of the spinal cord in mice embryos and their interaction with acidic sugar chains, mainly keratin sulphate (KS) in the pattern formation of embryonic spinal cord. Their study dealt with the localization of KS in the spinal cord and the consequences of its deletion which affected oligodendrocyte development, which implies the involvement of KS in the signaling of crucial morphogens.
There were two ‘State of art lectures’: one from Prof Kautsiko Ono, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Japan. The second lecture was delivered by Dr. Arvind Kumar, CCMB, Hyderabad . The final talk of the first session was an Invited Lecture from Dr.Nikhil Palande, RTM Nagpur University, Nagpur.
The latter half of the day includes several other State of Art lectures and Plenary lectures from various scientists and faculties, to be followed by a poster session, and will be concluded with a Conference welcome banquet.
The Conference, which is set to take place for a total of four days (24th-28th November) aims to serve as a common platform of presentations among the pioneers and scientists in the field of Comparative Endocrinology and Neurobiology for the benefit of the life sciences students’ community and members of the ISCE.