Back home to Marburg

Nice to be back in Marburg after a week in England. While it seems close it took us 9 h door to door from the Guest House in Marburg to our hotel in Russell Square, London last Saturday and 7 h door to door today from Paddington, London to Marburg. Travel in London is very expensive compared to train travel in Germany - GBP21 (Euro 29)  from Paddington to Heathrow compared to Euro15 from Frankfurt airport all the way back to Marburg!

London Taxi in Terminal 2

Norwich City

Today we visited the Norwich Museum and Cathedral. I have never seen so many churches in one city before. From one corner we could see 4 churches but many are now used as art and culture centres and the like. I was intrigued by the old weaving machine in the Museum which was made around 1890 with a mechanism invented by Jacquard that is said to be the 'first computer' as it is based on a binary system using holes punched in card sets which read the message to lift the warp thread. Reminded me of the Fortran punch cards we used in the 70's for computer programming.

Loom for weaving in Norwich Museum

Punch cards for loom

Visit to John Innes Centre

Yesterday was the first really wet day we have experienced since arriving in Europe 7 weeks ago. With science duties completed we went out to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts on the UEA campus. This Centre houses the extraordinary art collection of Sir Robert and Lisa Sainsbury. They must have had a big house to store and display all these items before they were donated to the Centre. A special exhibition of Francis Bacon and the Masters was a treat to visit. While I admired his work it would not be my choice of art to purchase or display even if it was affordable. What made the exhibition so good was the supplementation of artists who he admired and had influenced his work including Velazquez, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Van Gough, Picasso and Matisse.

Thursday was a day of science at the John Innes Centre at the invitation of ex patriate Mike Bevan. My seminar was well received. It was interesting to see Sophian Kamoun's stand up work bench - the first scientist I have met to adopt this style of working. I enjoyed the science discussions with Mike, Philippa Borrill and Sarah O'Connor. A surprise was to meet Abhi Sarkar, formerly of AgResearch, who is now working with Cathie Martin on a joint research program between India and UK on improving the nutritional quality of crops. 

The Cambridge Experience

What an extraordinary visit to Cambridge principally due to the wonderful hospitality by Uta and her inclusiveness of Christine plus all the associated history of this wonderful city. Last evening was special with dinner at St Johns College with the Fellows. Uta briefed us well on protocol in the Green room before we went in procession to the High Table for dinner. My table companion immediately started a conversation about the England versus NZ cricket game - annoying we lost! Fascinating to hear the history of the College and how it operates.

St Johns College Cambridge

Today I gave a seminar at the Sainsbury Laboratory, which is next to the Cambridge Botanic garden. Catching up with Sesbastian Schornack who I first met at MPMI in Kyoto was stimulating - marvellous imaging of Phytophthora in planta. I enjoyed talking to someone who is as excited as I am about the impact of fungal symbionts on plant development. The architecture of the Sainsbury Laboratory is quite remarkable – it won an architectural award in 2012.  It also houses the University's herbarium including species collected by Darwin. 

While the Botanic Garden is quite small it is beautifully laid out with beds of plants of matching flower colours really setting it off. I liked the chronological garden showing when plants from other countries were introduced into the UK. There are twice as many species of plants in this small Botanic garden than all the plant species in UK.

We arrived in Norwich this afternoon and the first thing we did was to try and locate Allan Road and the Terrace House we stayed in with our 3 children in 1989. Remarkably the houses are exactly the same as they were then but the houses on the banks of the Wensum nearby have been replaced with flash multi-storey apartments.

A pint at The Mill - Cambridge

Keep off the grass

Hard to believe we are staying at St Johns College in Cambridge for two nights. First impression of Cambridge was the rather run down and small railway station  Checking into the college with the stark and ancient buildings seemed quite surreal. We have a room quite close to the Bridge of Sighs with a window looking out onto the river Cam. What seems very strange to us are the signs everywhere that say "Keep off the grass". Quite a contrast to Hyde Park where everyone was having a picnic on the grass.

Bridge of Sighs St Johns College Cambridge

Earlier today we visited the British Museum but there is so much to see that you have to restrict yourself to a few rooms if you want to get the most out of it. In previous visits I was all for repatriation of some of the art to the country of origin but given the current events in the Middle East and elsewhere I am delighted some of these wonderful artefacts are safe in this Museum. The impact of 3D graphics on reconstruction of how ancient sites may have looked is a wonderful addition since last time I visited.

Cast of stone carving from Persian palace at Persepolis

Fish and Chips in London

You can't come to London without having Fish and Chips. Very nice with a beer after a long day of travelling and an opportunity to watch the Black Caps batting so well against the English cricket team at Lords. Today we caught the ferry down the Thames to the old Royal Naval College and Museum at Greenwich. The painted room is considered one of finest dining rooms in Europe - it took Sir James Thornhill 19 years to paint the ceiling and walls of this remarkable hall. We also visited the Chapel in time to catch the final 20 min of a Sunday service with wonderful singing. We then enjoyed a long walk along the banks of the Thames then caught the tube to Hyde Park to see Palmerston North artist Paul Dibble's New Zealand war memorial - most unusual for a memorial of that kind but with the distinctive flair that characterises much of New Zealand art. The kowhai and huia bronze sculptures in Palmerston North square are by Dibble.

The Painted Room Greenwich Naval College

NZ War Memorial Hyde Park - by Paul Dibble

ONZM for Kathryn

Work started at 7 am this morning with a Skype with Gill and Taryn. Nice to hear Kathryn received the insignia of the ONZM from the Governor General in Government House yesterday.

Kathryn Stowell being congratulated by Governor General Jerry Mateparae

We have now been here in Marburg 6 weeks but I have still not caught up with everyone in the Kahmann lab - but close now. Today I met with Joachim and Andre. I was already familiar with the background to Joachim's project as I was one of the judges of his poster at Asilomar. It was nice to have the time to more fully understand the complexities of the project. The Dictyostelium bioassay for an active Acb1 peptide was very cool. Andre took me through his PhD work on Pit2. Nice to have such a clean host interaction phenotype and to identify the host interactors. We also spent some time discussing the RNAseq experiment he is managing which will require some very serious computational analysis. I shared with him some of our RNAseq data sets and how they were analysed.

Tomorrow we are off to London then on to Cambridge Monday and Norwich Wednesday.

His zippers and jam jars

A very productive day finishing off Discussion for Matthias & Yvonne's manuscript and submitting manuscript on Will's MSc results to FEMS Microbial Ecology. This is the first time I have encountered a compulsory requirement of submitting a graphical abstract with the submission.

In the afternoon I met with Robin and Magdalena from Alga's group to hear their story on Dld1, a small secreted protein from Piriformaspora that binds iron. Some wonderful imaging of Piri infecting the roots of barley by Magdalena and some nice data from Robin showing this protein binds iron - micro scale thermophoresis was a new technique for me. Amazing the data you can generate from 4 micro litres of sample. Jam jars sure are good for growing barley in axenic culture. Hearing about silencing of gfp and the native gene, presumably by quelling, was a bit of deja vu (aka recent observation by Kimberly). Much to my surprise I discovered Robin plays rugby - maybe with time this wonderful game will become truly international

Frauenberg Ruins - Marburg

Frauenberg Ruins - Marburg

After work Christine and I biked around to the ruins at Frauenberg. What a magnificent 360 degree view of the surrounds of Marburg - we counted at least 20 small villages.

Uta's visit

On Monday Uta Paszkowski from Plant Sciences at Cambridge visited the Institute to give a seminar and meet with everyone. What a live wire. A very interesting seminar highlighting how more complex the signalling is between AM fungi and plants than rhizobia and legumes. Regine invited Christine and I to join Uta, herself and members of the lab for dinner at the Zur Sonne in the evening. I did enjoy the white asparagus and fish, and the Schnapps to finish the evening. Uta and I are guest editors of the Biotic Interactions issue of Current Opinion in Plant Biology which will be published in August but there was not too much time to discuss our editorial - maybe next week in Cambridge.

Patio garden

Our apartment patio garden - very low maintenance compared to our 1.5 hectare property at home!

Patio Guest Hause #9  Philipp's Universitat

Cycling at the head of the Lahntal

Today we caught the train to Feudingen near the headwaters of the Lahn to cycle back to Friedensdorf where we started last Saturday - a distance of about 30 km. The first part of the cycleway was gravel through the forest which was nice but then we hit the asphalt at Bad Laasphe to cruise most of the rest of the way. Christine has now completed around 180 km of the approx 240 km of the Lahntal cycle trail - she plans to complete the final section from Limberg to Koblenz this week.

The Germans are very big on recycling which impresses me. There is a surcharge of 25 cents on all their plastic bottles which is great to see. There is a machine at the Supermarket down the hill where you can 'post' your plastic bottles from which you receive a credit toward your next supermarket purchase. Very hard to persuade politicians to do this in NZ but it would help keep the streets free of plastic bottles.

I have now submitted Matt Nicholson's manuscript to Toxins - great to have that one cleared from my desk. On Friday I met with two more researchers from the Kahmann lab; post doc Liang Liang and PhD student Nicole Ludwig. Liang has been working on an effector that is required for the very early stages of maize leaf infection. Nicole is just 6 months into her PhD and is off to a great start by identifying another gene required for early infection. She took me up to the greenhouse on top of the building to see the tumours that develop on maize leaves when infected with U. maydis. Libera was infecting some seedlings while we were there. It is a very straightforward process of injecting 1 ml of inoculum straight into the stem of the maize plant - much easier than E. festucae infections of ryegrass.

Good news from Marsden Fund

Today is a public holiday in Germany but being the crazy scientist that I am I worked. I want to finish another manuscript before travelling to UK next weekend for a week. With only a few people around it was a very quiet day for writing. At the end of the day I met up with Christine to walk around to Spiegelslust for a well deserved beer and schnitzel. A little cool but warm enough to dine outside where there is a great view of the city below.

On Tuesday I caught up with Michael Bölker from the Genetics Dept for lunch at the Mensa after one of his PhD students gave a nice Dept seminar on synthesis of glycolipids (surfactants) in U. maydis.

Progress on the 10 Current Opinion in Plant Biology reviews has progressed well this week. I now have 4 signed off one more ready to sign off tomorrow. Then it is chasing up the tardy authors who have still not submitted their revised manuscripts. It is interesting being in the role of guest editor chasing others up when its usually the opposite.

The good news this week was the invitation to submit a full proposal for the second round of the Marsden Fund. But the downside is knowing the long hours that now need to go in to prepare a good application. That will disrupt my manuscript writing a little but with one week in UK and another week at Usedom and Berlin before submission that will force me to be efficient.

The weekly lab meeting

Today was the weekly lab meeting for the Kahmann lab. Much longer than our lab meetings but good they present raw data - Westerns, microscope photos, alignments or whatever are thrown into the middle of the table for everyone to see and discuss. Consequently, there are some long discussions. I am surprised they use just one reference gene for their qRT-PCR. I am now realising what a tremendous resource we have with all our RNAseq data to inform our research.

Yesterday Christine and I made a day visit to Kassel which is a big city about one hour by train north of Marburg. Given I had a Bioprotection Centre report to finish before we left we didn't arrive there till lunch time then spent the afternoon walking around the splendid gardens of Wilhelmshöhe park, one of the biggest public parks in Europe. This park has UNESCO heritage status because of a major statue of Hercules mounted on a massive octagonal stone structure which is also the source of this amazing waterway that leads down the hill through a series of ponds, waterfalls and aqueducts. It was constructed in the 17th century by Landgrave Karl of Hesse-Kassel. 400,000 litres of water are released down this waterway every Wednesday, Sunday and public holiday. It takes over an hour for the water to reach the pond directly in front of the magnificent Schloss Wilhelmshöhe.

Cycling on the Lahntal

Today we took our bikes by train north of Marburg to the small town of Friedensdorf and then cycled back to Marburg criss-crossing both the Lahn river and the railway several times and passing through several very pretty small villages. This is one small section (30 km) of the popular Lahntal cycleway that goes from the headwaters of the Lahn all the way to where it meets the Rhine - a total distance of 245 km. There is a great feeling of freedom and open spaces riding on these cycleways through the fields of barley and canola and through the small villages. A beer in Marburg after this 2.5 h ride was well deserved.

Seminar in Marburg

Today I gave a seminar at the Max Planck Institute in Marburg, the second for the week. This one was a little more polished than the one in Bochum plus there was no issues with quality of the slide projection which occurred in Bochum and ruined the talk somewhat. Questions ran for about 20 min afterwards which was good so lots of interest and feedback from the students and post docs whose work I have been critiquing the last 4 weeks.

Yesterday I heard the Bioprotection Centre has been refunded for another 5 year term which is great news. No details yet whether we got the level of funding we asked for or not. I felt quite confident about this bid as the lessons were learnt from the failed bid a year ago with much fewer people involved and a very strong emphasis on quality.

Great hospitality in Bochum

What wonderful hospitality we have received for our visit to Bochum, one of 3 large cities - the others being Dortmund and Essen - all within 20 km of one another in what is one of the most densely populated areas of Germany. Once the heart of the coal and steel industry for Germany until the last coal mine closed in 1993. Now Germany imports cheaper coal from Australia! Downtown Bochum is a wonderful open pedestrian area with lots of large modern buildings from which the towers of several old churches emerge.

The University is to the South East of the the city centre and is one of the largest universities in Germany with around 50,000 students. Its not an attractive university - it is a bit of a concrete jungle of buildings designed like ships with funnels on the top and colour coded by faculty - green for science, red for medicine and yellow for humanities. But next to the Biology building is one of the best University Botanic gardens in Germany - a national treasure. The green houses have thousands and thousands of potted plants from all over the world. Unfortunately I did not get too much time to look at this wonderful collection of plants but Christine had a 2 h guided tour while I talked science with Ulrich's students.

Ulrich Kück was a wonderful host. On Monday we had lunch in an old farm house within the Botanic garden that has been converted to a restaurant followed by a tour of the Botanic gardens. Yesterday Ulrich took me to the University Mensa where they serve around 4000 meals a day - see photos below - quite staggering. After my seminar Ulrich presented me with a University mug and a Frühstücksbrettchen. We then went to his house for dinner with some of his lab where we sampled some great beer and wine not to mention the prawns and white asparagus.

The science they are doing within his Department is outstanding. They are working on fruiting body development in Sordaria (pro mutants and STRIPAK complex), role of mating type genes and penicillin biosynthesis in Penicillium chrysogenum, cephalosporin biosynthesis in Acremonium chrysogenum in cooperation with the drug giant Sandoz (in Austria) and trans-splicing (similar to bacterial Type II intron splicing) in the chloroplast of Chlamydomonas. Some common themes within their projects are the wide use of RNAseq, ChIP seq and TAP tagging of large protein complexes and identification of the products by Mass Spec in collaboration with a group at Dortmund. Much of the work I heard about was presented at Asilomar. Some of the technical tips I picked up on various methods should be very helpful. We do need a better quality genome assembly of E. festucae to be able to do ChIP seq experiments.

To qualify for a PhD at the University of Bochum the students must have one first authored paper published and at least one other first authored manuscript prepared for submission. Of course there are exceptions to this general rule but that is the general policy. Interestingly in The Netherlands PhD students are required to have a total of 4 publications with I think 2 of them first authored. Everyone here starts work at 8 am in the morning so they all put in long hours. Several of them commute from Dortmund or Essen each day.

We head back to Marburg this morning. Luckily our bookings are with private rail companies as the Deutschebahn workers have gone on strike today until Sunday - one of the biggest and most disruptive train worker strikes in Germany's history.

Stirnhelle forest hike

Today we had a wonderful 12 km walk in the forest near Oberrosphe which is about a 20 min drive from Marburg. Following a track in a forest here can sometimes be quite confusing as there are usually a multitude of tracks and invariably roads as well but the S signs on the trees kept us to the planned route. As we came out of the forest we saw a fox - my very first sighting. Nearly all the farmers reside in the village rather than on a separate house on the farm as you would see in NZ so the houses are quite big with a big yard and shed for the tractor and other farm equipment as well as the wood. Lots of people were out chain sawing and splitting wood presumably for next winter.

Yesterday was a public holiday to celebrate Labour Day. One of the post docs Marino invited a number of us around to his apartment for brunch. With everyone bringing food as well as him cooking quite a lot there was more than enough for everyone. Marino is from Turino so he had lots of tasty spreads, hams and cheeses he had brought back from his home town to share with us.