Month: February 2017

First experiments started

Planting first Brassica rapa seedlings

Three weeks before the start of the experiments we were transferring the seedlings to pots.

Mating the butterflies to obtain egg-laying females

Is this a male or a female?

Egg-laying maschines

Female cabbage whites did a quick job by laying 3 single eggs on one leave within a minute.

Collecting leaf material for RNA extraction and qPCR analysis

Sampling leaf disks below and next to the egg.


Gordon Research Conference 2017

Succesful conference

The conference was a great success, with lots of nice talks, entertaining introductions by hosts, great poster presentations and fruitful workshops, as well as plenty of time for networking! More than 200 researchers from the U.S., Germany, The Netherlands and many other countries participated. Great job of the organizers Nicole van Dam and Spencer Behmer!

Poster presentations

Luis Paniagua, Georgios Valsamakis and Vivian Firtzlaff (PhDs @FU Berlin) in front of their poster on 'antibiotic effects on priming of defences by eggs ' which got lots of attention and feedback.

Tweet by Julia Korisheva (Univ. of London, UK) after my talk

Enjoying Californian sun

To overcome the jet lag, we went for a walk on Ventura harbor and beach with Luis, Georgios and others from WUR/FU.

Four Points Sheraton Hotel at Ventura harbour

The Gordon team found a nice venue for the conference. The food and facilities were excellent Only the poster room was too noisy.