Barcelona, 13 June 2019 James Sharpe elected EMBO Member James Sharpe, Head of EMBL Barcelona, is one of 56 scientists elected as new EMBO Members this year. He joins a prestigious organisation of more than 1800 scientists that promotes excellence in the life sciences and enables international exchange among researchers. more

Heidelberg, 12 June 2019 Hydraulic force shapes mammalian embryos Fluid pressure inside an early mouse embryo plays an important role in controlling its size and determining the fate of its cells, according to researchers from EMBL and Harvard University. In their study, published in Nature, the team applied a new tool to directly measure the fluid pressure of a blastocoel which increases significantly during blastocyst maturation. more

Heidelberg, Hamburg, Grenoble, Hinxton, Rome, Barcelona, 11 June 2019 Sveika, Lietuva! On 7 June, EMBL welcomed Lithuania as its 27th member state. “We are very pleased to take this next step for EMBL and for Lithuania,” said EMBL Director General Edith Heard. “Integrating the European life sciences community and forming even closer ties between its researchers are overarching goals for EMBL and its member states.” more

General, 7 June 2019 Top tips for teaching yourself to code Computer programming is not always a part of the undergraduate life science curriculum. But, for many, coding skills have become a necessary tool in the biologist’s toolkit. If you find yourself thrown in at the deep end during your PhD or later, you are not alone. Here, members of the EMBL community who went through similar situations share their top tips for people at the beginning of their coding journey. more

Heidelberg, 6 June 2019 Editing the ethical code Tim Lewens was always going to be a scientist. That is, until a gap year spent reading philosophy books left him with cold feet. He switched to philosophy during his first week at university, but immediately feared he had made a huge mistake leaving science behind. In February, he gave a Science and Society talk at EMBL Heidelberg entitled ‘Blurring the germline – from genome editing to transgenerational epigenetic inheritance’. more

Grenoble, 4 June 2019 Paving the way for new flu drugs Researchers from the Cusack group in EMBL Grenoble have, for the first time, observed different functional states of the influenza virus polymerase as it is actively transcribing. These results, published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, provide valuable information for the next generation of anti-influenza drugs. more

Barcelona, Grenoble, Hamburg, Heidelberg, 31 May 2019 A thirst for science Last week, EMBL got together with the global science festival Pint of Science to explain and celebrate science. Our scientists in Barcelona, Grenoble, Hamburg and Heidelberg left their labs, went to pubs and shared their research with hundreds of science enthusiasts while having a beer. more

General, 16 May 2019 The origins of plastic pollution at sea The Tara Ocean Foundation launches Mission Microplastics: the exploration of 10 European rivers to assess the impact of plastics from the land to the sea. EMBL will organise special events during the upcoming ports of call at or near EMBL sites: London, Hamburg, Rome, Marseille and Barcelona. more

Heidelberg, 15 May 2019 Breaking the bottleneck in imaging data collection Martin Schorb, Application Engineer in EMBL’s Electron Microscopy Core Facility, and colleagues from EMBL Heidelberg and the University of Colorado, USA, have developed two software tools that allow automated acquisition of electron microscopy data. The tools, SerialEM and py-EM, are presented in a paper published in Nature Methods. more

General, 9 May 2019 Diverse and united: Science in Europe Jean-Eric Paquet, Director General of Research and Innovation at the European Commission, recently visited EMBL to meet EMBL Director General Edith Heard and other senior EMBL faculty, and to tour EMBL’s labs and facilities. Discussions during the day covered topics such as interdisciplinarity, research infrastructures, and collaboration with industry. Here, Edith Heard and Jean-Eric Paquet reflect on the future of science in Europe, and on the key role that research and innovation must play. more