Double trouble: a Clock Club and a Festschrift!

Is Manchester the planet’s capital city of chronobiology? As the home of The Centre for Biological Timing, and the most represented institution among clock club members, it’s certainly a strong contender. This Autumn’s Clock Club delivered exciting research and brought together more than 180 academics from a wide array of backgrounds—clinicians, botanists, zoologists and mathematicians all joined in the common quest of understanding biological rhythms.

The day was kicked off with an Introduction by our tireless organisers: Rebecca Hughes and Bea Bano-Otalora, both working in Manchester, and no doubt sacrificing some of their own rhythmicity in the process of planning this grand event.

The morning session hosted three phenomenal talks. First was Sophie Faulkner (Manchester), talking us through the development of the L-DART sleep improvement intervention and all the complexities of implementing it in clinical practice. Next up, Casey Diekman (New Jersey Institute of Technology) presented some striking mathematical models that got us thinking about how the safety of anti-arrhythmic drugs is significantly affected by the time of day they are taken. Finally, Jean-Michel Fustin (Manchester) reminded us just how important it is to get some methionine and choline into your diet—by removing these from the diets of his mice, he was able to observe an effect on the methyl cycle, with intriguing consequences for the molecular circadian clock and behaviour.

With 15 minutes to spare before lunch it was time for the Data Blitz! Reminiscent of the Olympic relay team, 10 young researchers took turns sprinting through their work and inviting the audience to their poster over the break. The café lounge held treats as far as the eye could see—22 research posters, industrial expertise at our sponsor stalls and, as I recall, a decent spread of food. 

Fully nourished, we were ready for the second session. Pi-shan Chang (Bristol) shared her work on the sex differences in mouse infradian rhythms. Andrew Patton (LMB Cambridge) outlined the role of astrocytic Annexin-A2 signalling in circadian timekeeping and Jake Ahern (Birmingham) enlightened us on the bursting activity of TIDA neurons. Our own Emily Sample (Leicester) reframed our understanding of Cryptochrome, a molecule we know and love for its role in circadian regulation by investigating its role in modulating neuronal transmission. Ruby Chrisp (Manchester) discussed her experiments on the circadian control of the secretory pathway. Some young lady from BioClocks UK (Leicester) mumbled something about impact, and before we knew it, it was time for tea.

The third and final session presented us with an exciting mix of model organisms. Bristol’s Mark Naven works with circadian-disrupted zebrafish to image the inflammatory wound response. Aberystwyth’s Drew Oliphant (Aberystwyth and LMB) and Chee Sia (LMB) struck up a double act to investigate clock gene expression in intertidal crustaceans, producing some stunning 3D brain models in the process.  Deirde Lynch (John Innes Centre) described her work with Arabidopsis that investigates the effects of temperature on flowering rhythms. Also from John Innes, Luísa Jabbur reported her remarkable observation of photoperiodic response in Cyanobacteria.

Finally, the keynote lecture by Prof Andrew Loudon was introduced by Mick Hastings (LMB), who highlighted some of Andrew’s phenotypes, particularly mimicking the one where Andrew stops and ties up his shoelaces when he enters a pub with colleagues!  Mick also talked a little bit about some of the work he and Andrew have done together over the years. Andrew then took us on a light-hearted journey of his life’s work on deer, arctic ground squirrels, Syrian hamsters and, of course, his favourite organism (apparently), wallabies. This insightful foray had the audience enraptured as he fondly recalled discoveries, old friends, and hailed the pars tuberalis as the focal point for mediating seasonal reproductive responses. 

The event was rounded off with a prize-giving. Awards were given for best talks, posters and data blitz.

The talk winner was Luísa Jabbur (John Innes Centre), with runners up Mark Naven (University of Bristol) and Andrew Patton (LMB). Jeffrey Kelu (King’s College London) won the prize for most invigorating Data Blitz on his project investigating circadian mechanisms in muscle growth.

Finally, the best poster prize went to Chloe Roddis (University of Manchester) for her naturalistic study on the impact of light exposure on mood, with runners up Adam Bradlaugh (University of Manchester) who works on cryptochrome-mediated magnetoreception, Sophie Smith (University of Bristol) who works on modelling the role of calcium channel signalling in epilepsy and Alzheimer’s, and Aline Yochikawa (John Innes Centre) who is investigating how harnessing the circadian clock can reduce food waste.

All in all, Manchester hosted a brilliant clock club—informative, warm and friendly as ever. Thank you so much Rebecca and Bea for organising it so beautifully.

But that’s not all!

If you stuck around for another day, you would have caught Prof Andrew Loudon’s Festschrift—a celebration of Andrew’s influence and impact on chronobiology, evidenced by a veritable Who’s Who of academics working on seasonal and circadian behaviour and physiology. The meeting was opened by Alan McNeilly (Edinburgh), a giant in the field of mammalian reproductive biology who co-authored Andrew’s first paper (in Nature 1983), publishing regularly with him through the 80’s and 90’s, then again with several important papers after a ~20-year gap (last one Nat Comm 2020!). Listening to Alan’s effervescent description of their joint discoveries, it was plain to see how Alan and Andrew appear to have catalysed each other’s extraordinary scientific passion, enthusiasm and energy.  This was followed by another coworker of Andrew’s, Amanda Carr (UCL, Ophthalmology), who gave an incredible talk on her work using stem cells to correct her patients’ blindness—from pure research to the clinic in a few years- brilliant. Hugh Piggins (Bristol) shared some amusing anecdotes about his time with Andrew and recollected how, as an undergraduate in Edinburgh in the very early 1980’s, he attended lectures on reproductive biology given by Andrew in the Edinburgh Zoology department, plus a course by Bambos Kyriacou on circadian clocks in Psychology.  Clearly, Hugh never recovered from these traumas. 

The next session was chaired by Julian Davies (Manchester), yet another collaborator of Andrew’s who, like those that had gone before, also said a few nice things about him.  He introduced Jon Johnston (Surrey) who pondered the turning point in his career that saw Andrew, then his supervisor, introducing him to the joys of greeting hamsters with testes-measuring calipers on a daily basis.  Helen Christian (Oxford), a more recent collaborator of Andrew’s talked about their joint work on the pars tuberalis and this was followed by three former postdocs of Andrew’s, all now well-established professors at Manchester: David Bechtold, Qing-Jun Meng and Julie Gibbs. They paid tribute to Andrew’s intellect and encouragement during the early days of their career, with a little bit of data thrown in. This atmosphere was altered somewhat by Bambos Kyriacou (Leicester), who has never worked with Andrew, and who utilised AI software to have a bit of fun with an originally rather serious but respectable-looking photo of Andrew. Bambos recounted how he and Andrew had overlapped in Edinburgh for many years but had never met until the late 1980s after Andrew had moved to London.  Somewhat sheepishly, he then said that Andrew’s spectacular work had made him the most influential UK chronobiologist of the last 30 years.

John Hogenesch then gave a lecture by Zoom from Cincinnati in which he outlined how circadian principles are applied in his hospital in Ohio, and Rob Lucas, who was Andrew’s PhD student during their days at London Zoo, gave an amusing recollection of his time there plus a little bit of data on comparative circadian photosensitivity.

David Hazlerigg (Tromso, Norway) had come down specially from the world’s most northern university to tell us (not too seriously) about his work with and without Andrew on seasonal reproduction.  To cap it all David Ray joined us by Zoom from some meeting or other somewhere in Europe (with Achim Kramer and Till Roenneberg hovering in the background) and further embarrassed Andrew by telling us all what a great guy he is (which is true).

The spirit of the day was jovial and, um, unreserved—a testament to the power and joy of the illustrious career of a great chronobiologist. Though no longer fielding questions from Manchester undergrads or writing grant applications, Andrew will still no doubt be busy riding his motorbike all over Europe—perhaps he’ll write a book next? 

Image credit: Holly Dickenson, University of Manchester