EMBO | EMBL Symposium Inter-organ communication in physiology and disease

Symposium Overview
“Like a machine, any organism, even the simplest, is a functional unit, coherent and integrated. We are far from having elucidated, in complex organisms, the entire structure of these functional units”. A major outcome of research using model organisms has been to address this central question of biology that was stated so clearly and candidly by J. Monod in 1969. Genetic studies in model organism have first revealed that we are far from knowing all the functions fulfilled by various organs in vertebrates or invertebrates. In doing so, this body of work has nonetheless led to unprecedented progress in our understanding of how homeostasis of an entire organism is maintained. As a result, modern physiology has slowly moved from a purely molecular discipline back to rediscovering its holistic nature. The powerful combination of molecular and physiological approaches is revealing new insights into energy metabolism, endocrinology, cardiovascular and renal physiology as well as the regulation of cognitive and immune functions. Symbiotic interactions with resident microbes have added a further dimension to the study of host physiology.

This symposium aims to provide a high visibility platform to scientists from multiple disciplines who use molecular genetic tools to probe inter-organ communication signals that maintain homeostasis. We anticipate that, by bringing together scientists interested in various aspects of vertebrate and invertebrate animal physiology, we will foster interactions between them that will accelerate the discovery of novel physiologies. This meeting will also directly address a fundamental and long-term goal of the study of physiology: how can recent developments in whole-organism physiology pave the way to novel, adapted and efficient therapies for multiple degenerative diseases?

Session Topics
Brain-body crosstalk
The gut and its microbes
Fat and liver signals
Immune-metabolic crosstalk
Non-canonical inter-organ communication