ERS International Congress 2023: highlights from the Basic and Translational Sciences Assembly.

Early career members of Assembly 3 (Basic and Translational Sciences) of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) summarise the key messages discussed during six selected sessions that took place at the ERS International Congress 2023 in Milan, Italy. Aligned with the theme of the congress, the first session covered is "Micro- and macro-environments and respiratory health", which is followed by a summary of the "Scientific year in review" session. Next, recent advances in experimental methodologies and new technologies are discussed from the "Tissue modelling and remodelling" session and a summary provided of the translational science session, "What did you always want to know about omics analyses for clinical practice?", which was organised as part of the ERS Translational Science initiative's aims. The "Lost in translation: new insights into cell-to-cell crosstalk in lung disease" session highlighted how next-generation sequencing can be integrated with laboratory methods, and a final summary of studies is presented from the "From the transcriptome landscape to innovative preclinical models in lung diseases" session, which links the transcriptome landscape with innovative preclinical models. The wide range of topics covered in the selected sessions and the high quality of the research discussed demonstrate the strength of the basic and translational science being presented at the international respiratory conference organised by the ERS.

An evaluation of an open access iPSC training course: "How to model interstitial lung disease using patient-derived iPSCs".

BACKGROUND: Interstitial lung diseases (ILD) are a group of rare lung diseases with severe outcomes. The COST Innovator Grant aims to establish a first-of-a-kind open-access Biorepository of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and to train researchers in the skills required to generate a robust preclinical model of ILD using these cells. This study aims to describe and evaluate the effectiveness of a training course designed to train researchers in iPSC techniques to model ILD. METHODS: 74 researchers, physicians and stakeholders attended the training course in Dublin in May 2022 with 31 trainees receiving teaching in practical iPSC culturing skills. The training course learners were divided into the Hands-on (16 trainees) and Observer groups (15 trainees), with the Observers attending a supervised live-streamed experience of the laboratories skills directly delivered to the Hands-on group. All participants were asked to participate in an evaluation to analyse their satisfaction and knowledge gained during the Training Course, with means compared using t-tests. RESULTS: The gender balance in both groups was predominantly females (77.4%). The Hands-on group consisted mainly of researchers (75%), whereas all participants of the Observer group described themselves as clinicians. All participants in the Hands-on group were at least very satisfied with the training course compared to 70% of the participants in the Observer group. The knowledge assessment showed that the Hands-on group retained significantly more knowledge of iPSC characteristics and culturing techniques compared to the Observers (* < 0.05; p = 0.0457). A comprehensive learning video detailing iPSC culturing techniques was produced and is included with this manuscript. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of participants were highly or very satisfied with the training course and retained significant knowledge about iPSC characteristics and culturing techniques after attending the training course. Overall, our findings demonstrate the feasibility of running hybrid Hands-on and Observer teaching events and underscore the importance of this type of training programme to appeal to a broad spectrum of interested clinicians and researchers particularly in rare disease. The long-term implications of this type of training event requires further study to determine its efficacy and impact on adoption of iPSC disease modelling techniques in participants' laboratories.

Water relations and carbon gain are closely related to cushion size in the moss Grimmia pulvinata.

The present study of structural and physiological changes during the development of the cushion moss, Grimmia pulvinata, quantifies the size-dependence of various parameters of water relations such as changes in surface: volume ratio (S/V) or water loss rates, and also measures net CO2 gas exchange in the light and the dark. Larger cushions had lower S/V values than smaller ones and featured lower rates of area-based evapotranspiration, owing to higher boundary-layer resistance, but did not differ in relative water storage capacity (expressed as a percentage of d. wt). In combination, this leads to considerably longer hydration periods in larger cushions. By contrast, CO2 gas-exchange parameters were negatively correlated with size : larger cushions showed significantly lower (mass-based) rates of net photosynthesis and dark respiration. Using these data, we estimated carbon budgets during a drying cycle as a function of cushion size. When including alternations of dark and light periods, the relationship proved to be rather complicated. Depending on the time of hydration, net carbon budgets not only varied quantitatively with size but sometimes took on both positive and negative values depending on cushion size. We conclude that neglecting plant size can lead to unrepeatable or even misleading results in comparative ecophysiological studies, and therefore urge for adequate attention to be paid to size in these studies.