Group retreat 2023
From 29.08.-01.09.2023, the Bomblies group went on their third retreat to the Husky-Lodge in Muotathal. This year, we focused on grant writing and block course designs. There were also some amazing presentations from the team and a guest speaker.
Our retreat at the Husky Lodge was packed with talks and workshops. Kirsten startet with a review of last year and an outlook for 2024. Then she followed with a very helpful workshop on grant writing.
Vera talked about calcium signaling and it's impact at cellular level in Arabidopsis arenosa.
Aditya held a presentation on the possibilities of making Arabidopsis arenosa grafts.
Thanvi discussed genomic techniques covering top-down and bottom-up approaches to understand on how genomic diversity is linked to functions and vice versa.
Kirsten and Marinela talked about block course design. They evaluated our past block courses and we discussed on how to improve them in the future.
Marinela also held a wonderful ideas club, where we discussed possible mechanisms of interference during meiosis and chromatin architecture. To further visualize this, we had an interactive session of designing our individual chromosome models.
Our fabulous guest speaker, Prof Alex Widmer, talked about alpine plant adaptation, focusing on Dianthus sylvestris, (an arguably more beautiful flower than our favorite plant Arabidopsis arenosa). We learned among other things, how changing climates cause changes in genomes for enabling adaptation.
Besides the heavy workload, we went on two different hikes. One to the wild romantic Bisisthal with its waterfalls and the idyllic Waldi-lake. We had a lot of animal encounters. Goats and cows followed one group for almost half an hour! Even horses wanted to join, but they were luckely in an enclosure. The other group also met a lot of cows and even found a slowworm (Blindschleiche).
The second hike went to the Bödmeren forest. Located in the lower part of the Silberen-Twärenen karst area. Apart from a few alpine pastures, the area is covered by one of the most beautiful mountain forests in Europe. Slender columnar firs with olive-coloured lichen beards cover the jagged rock with greenery. In the higher part of the forest, the firs stand far apart, leaving space for willows and barrow humps.
Some of us also found time to do some climbing - on the climbing tower or on the cliff right beside the Husky Lodge. And all of us met after dinner for a game of "werewolves" which was a lot of fun.
In the photo gallery below you can find some pictures of our retreat:
