Fourth Annual Eurasnet Meeting, April 23-24 2009, Assisi, Italy

Organisers: Giuseppe Biamonti, IGM-CNR Pavia, Italy
Ian Eperon, Department of Biochemistry, Leicester, UK

The Fourth Annual Eurasnet Meeting, organised by Giuseppe Biamonti and Ian Eperon, was held at the Grand Hotel Assisi, in Italy. We were all pampered by heavenly food at the hotel and by beautiful landscapes of Italian Umbria. The meeting gathered researchers and students from around 40 laboratories.

At the reporting meeting, most of the time was spent on the reporting sessions for all work packages. However, the meeting gave the opportunity for all EURASNET members to discuss their future plans and collaborations between labs.

The meeting started on Thursday morning, with the welcome talk by Reinhard Lührmann, highlighting EURASNET achievements in the previous year. The reporting sessions from all work packages were also graced by some brilliant scientific talks.

For example Hennig Urlaub talked about the importance of reversible phosphorylation as a driving force for spliceosome remodeling and showed a new comprehensive MS-based method for analysis of phosphopeptides.

Reinhard Lührmann presented his recent results on the proteomic analysis of the yeast spliceosome. His study revealed that spliceosome from yeast contains a radically lower number of proteins, compared to the human one, with almost all of them being evolutionally conserved.

After busy, science-filled mornings many of us were tempted to spend the afternoons exploring the beautiful Umbrian surroundings: the charming spring Assisi with its medieval streets and beautiful churches and the capital of Umbria and a heaven for chocolate-lovers – Perugia.

The meeting was closed on Friday evening with a guided tour for all participants to the magnificent 13th-century Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi, which was followed by a fantastic dinner in the nearby Hotel Subasio. From the open-air restaurant terrace we could admire stunning views of the Basilica during a real Mediterranean sunset.

In summary – I believe we all had a fantastic (and very productive for our research) time in Assisi and I am looking forward to meeting all EURASNET members again during next year annual meeting in Portugal.

~ Dominika Lewandowska, SCRI