Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences
The traditional institutional conference took place on May 25th – 26th, 2023 in the premises of the IMG in Krč. After the lecture, the event was followed by a whole-institution assembly, focusing on scientific work at the IMG. At the end of this celebration, the best publication results for 2022 were awarded.
The Director’s Prize of the Institute of Molecular Genetics (IMG) is a prestigious award acknowledging outstanding results and contributions of the IMG author teams in the area of the institute’s scientific focus.
“This prize continues the wish of the former IMG director Josef Říman, for the financial resources from his inheritance to be used to reward individuals and/or scientific teams who have achieved new and fundamental scientific insights as part of their research activities each calendar year,” says the current IMG director Petr Dráber, adding: “Thanks to the financial support from Josef Říman’s estate, we are able annually to acknowledge the three best publications that have made significant contributions to the progress and development of the field of molecular biology.”
In 2022, the third place was awarded to the publication from the laboratory of Hanka Hanzlíková: “BRAT1 links Integrator and defective RNA processing with neurodegeneration”, published in Nature Communications.
The second place was awarded to the laboratory of Petr Svoboda for the publication: “Structural and functional basis of mammalian microRNA biogenesis by Dicer”, published in Molecular Cell.
Finally, the first place was awarded to the laboratory of Ondřej Štěpánek for the publication: “Unique roles of co-receptor-bound LCK in helper and cytotoxic T cells”, published in Nature Immunology.
In his speech, the institute’s director primarily discussed the conditions of scientific work at IMG. He began by mentioning the 70th anniversary of the publication of our institute’s founder, Milan Hašek, on vegetative hybridization, which was one of the cornerstones of the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance; this discovery was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1960, unfortunately only to F. M. Burnet and P. Medawar.
He then focused on lab notebooks and storage of research data at IMG. He mentioned that this issue was mapped out at IMG as part of a questionnaire survey, which showed great heterogeneity in this area. He emphasized the importance of using electronic lab notebooks (ELN) and their role in applying FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles to research data.
He informed about the ongoing discussion at the level of the Centre for Technology Transfer of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (CETTAV), the IMG leadership, and the management of the CZ-OPENSCREEN infrastructure regarding ELN and the possibilities of creating a proprietary ELN-IMG. In the next part, he informed about several of the best results of IMG in 2022 and awarded prizes for the three best publications during this period.
In the final part, he thanked all employees for their cooperative approach to solving all work tasks and for participating in the assembly and conference. He emphasized that the Covid pandemic led to the postponement of the whole institute conference associated with the party until the end of May. Due to positive feedback, we will continue this tradition next year as well.
