With basic scientific help from NCBS's Navneet Rai and Mukund Thattai, a team of students guided by Yashas Shetty from the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology at Bangalore have done it yet again: an award at the famed International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States of America.

"Just the workshop on Wikipedia editing," I told myself at the start of the conference. It would come in handy to start and edit NCBS wikipages, part of my work at the NCBS News team. "And maybe just the first plenary talk too". At the end of the three-day Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS), I realised I had attended almost every session: plenaries, student talks, workshops, poster rounds and discussions. What had made it so engaging?

Scientists, for the first time ever, are asking the Indian public what they should be studying. What, according to the public, are the most important questions to ask about the natural world - the plants, animals, habitats and the people that interact with them? There are a multitude of threats that these systems face in India and the public's opinion is imperative. This has prompted fifteen scientists across seven organisations to come up with a nationwide internet survey: The Horizon Scanning India. This simple two-stage questionnaire aims to pinpoint priority areas of future research that Indians think are necessary to protect biodiversity, ecosystems and natural assets across India.

After spending a year-long sabbatical at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, and just before heading back to Marseille, Thomas Lecuit recently gave his final talk to a packed audience at NCBS. It was full of surprises as the live natural performance of his children occurred in concert with their father's talk, on "Tissue Dynamics".

Here, Thomas Lecuit shares his thoughts about his life-time spent uncovering the secrets of tissue morphogenesis.

Samrat Mondol, a PhD student in Uma Ramakrishnan's lab was recently chosen for the prestigious Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral and Professional Research Fellowship. This will fund his visit the University of Washington for the next nine months.  Samrat will be provided with a scholarship, stipend and air travel to conduct research, audit courses and gain experience from the research milieu at the University.

The Human Frontier Science Program supports novel, innovative and interdisciplinary basic research focused on the complex mechanisms of living organisms; topics range from studying systems by molecular and cellular approaches, to cognitive neuroscience. It encourages novel collaborations that tackle problems at the frontier of the life sciences by bringing biologists together with scientists from fields such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, computer science and engineering. Such projects, beyond the reach of individual laboratories, are supported by grants that draw together teams of scientists from different countries.

At the end of 2010, 10^th HFSP Awardees Meeting was held in Kerala from 31^st Nov-3^rd October. Prof. Ramanathan Sowdhamini was appointed as Principal Investigator for a project which will enable a focused thrust over a wide range of areas: bioinformatics, experimental biochemistry and biophysics, and mathematical modelling. These will all be applied to help understand the biology of a group of mechanosensory proteins called myosins.

Finally, we have another reason to believe that everyone is hard at work within the walls at NCBS! Faculty, students and researchers have lit up the world stage and brought back accolades. Here, we present a list of the prize winners from 2008 and 2009. We hope to follow up soon with a list from 2010!

One of the leading US research centres, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, home to 15 Nobel laureates since 1987, recently announced an international early career scientist program, which will support up to 35 scientists working in selected countries outside the United States. The program will support investigators who "are, or have the potential to become, scientific leaders". India is one of the eligible countries for applicants. The International Early Career Scientist Program will select and support highly qualified scientists who are in the critical beginning stages of their independent careers. HHMI International Early Career Scientists will receive very attractive five-year grants—$US250,000 in the first year and $US100,000 for each of the following four years. While applicants will be currently working outside of the US, they must have trained in the United States at the doctoral, medical or postdoctoral level. Applications close February 23, 2011 and full information can be found at this site: http://www.hhmi.org/research/competitions

There are cells which don't live or behave by the accepted set of rules. These cells have evolved adaptations to survive the unusual niches they inhabit, and include bacteria, eukaryotes and other life-forms that do not seem to fit into any neat category. Of course to these cells their niches are not unusual at all - "extreme"  is a rather anthropocentric term, and presumes to define what is normal. We will talk about these cells and their adaptations in great detail, come Wednesday, and try to draw out some basic evolutionary concepts underlying cellular development and the gradual appearance of multi-cellularity. And on Tuesday, Prof. Samir Damare from National Institute of Oceanography, Goa is visiting NCBS to kick off this week's celebration of Xtreme Biology with a talk about the extreme environment of the deep sea and the organisms that dwell there.