We get up around 8am. Air is chilly, but sun is out to warm everything up soon. To make coffee and tea we get out of a tent on our mats. As it gets warmer we roll off mats on grass to stretch. Pretty soon stretching develops into proper yoga session. Later on we move on to discuss science, biology, and tissue homeostasis in particular. Because it was such a long walk yesterday we decide to do kind of a restday....

Fourth day is the day when we take on the big loop around the peaks of the main massive. Its around 20km and 1650 meters in altitude starting and finishing in Vegarredonda. The alarm clock is set to 6 AM. Night is full of rain and wind; foggy cold morning air dampens my enthusiasm to get out as early as planned. So we do no rush, take leasurly breakfast and around nine o’clock we adjust our expectations....

Conference notes on the first day of the The New Cardiobiology 2024 organized in Heidelberg 19-22.2. Despite being the first edition of the meeting was super organized and packed with good talks. Keynote 1: Christine Mummery The efficiency of current pharmacological treatments is not very high. In fact, for 10 top selling drugs in US, for one patient which benefited from the treatment there are 3 to 24 patients who do not improve....

Notes on the last day of the conference. For me the highlight was the Dylan Burnette’s talk on sarcomere assembly, something I can directly relate to. Too much good stuff. Giulia Savore The Melusin cardioprotective chaperone tunes lipid metabolism to promote cardiac resilience to stress University of Torino, Italy Melusin one interacts with Integrin-beta one and also with mitochondria. It stimulates compensatory hypertrophy and protects from oxidative stress. Dylan T. Burnette Regulation of ventricular contractility driven atrial ballooning by the alpha actinin family member ACTN4...

For this conference I got lucky and earned the Travel Award for my poster Mechanosensor YAP1 drives myofibril development and maturation in human cardiomyocytes. In case you are interested in learning about the work (Introduction, Conclusions) and about our team, read on. In case you want to see the poster contact me (vladimir.vinarsky (at) fnusa.cz) or have a look at the preprint of the work at bioRxiv. Image credit: Zuzana Garlikova...