Meeting report – Building the Cell 2018

Abstract

Cell biologists from all around the world gathered in Paris on the 26 to 28 September 2018 to participate in the 3rd international meeting 'Building the Cell'. It was organized by Heĺeǹe Barelli, Arnaud Echard, Thierry Galli, Florence Niedergang, Manuel Theŕy and Marie Heĺeǹe Verlhac on behalf of the French Society for Cell Biology (SBCF) at the Institut Pasteur. Around 230 participants joined the meeting for stimulating talks, discussions, poster sessions, and a gala dinner on the Seine that included a music performance by the rock group 'Membrane Band'. The unifying theme of the meeting was the development of creative multidisciplinary approaches to understand cellular life at different scales in a dynamic and quantitative manner. Here, we summarize the results presented at the meeting and the emerging ideas from the different sessions.The 3rd international meeting 'Building the Cell' (Fig. 1; Fig. 2) was divided into ten different sessions that covered a variety of topics including intracellular trafficking, cell division, cytoskeletal dynamics and cell mechanics, cancer and stem cell biology, embryonic development and tissue morphogenesis, neurobiology, and aggregates and phase transitions. A broad spectrum of modern approaches and experimental systems ranging from synthetic biology and stem cell technologies to 3D organoids and animal models was presented. The meeting highlighted some of the latest and novel findings in cell biology, often coupled to major methodological developments in quantitative microscopy and computational modelling, as well as cell and tissue micro-engineering.Membrane, intracellular trafficking and mechanics