40 years of the Cell Cycle: From Foundational Discovery to Multiscale Biology

Chairperson: Adele MARSTON
Centre for Cell Biology, Max Born Crescent, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3BF, UK
Phone: +44 (0) 131 650 7088
Email: adele.marston@ed.ac.uk 

Vice-chairperson: Julien DUMONT
Institut Jacques Monod, 15 rue Hélène Brion, 75013 Paris, France
Phone: + 33 (0) 1 57 27 80 49
Email: julien.dumont@ijm.fr

40 Years of the Cell Cycle: From Foundational Discovery to Multiscale Biology celebrates forty years since the first Jacques Monod Cell Cycle Conference was held in Roscoff. Over four decades, these meetings have played an important role in shaping our understanding of eukaryotic cell-cycle control, providing a forum where fundamental principles were discovered, debated and refined, including work that contributed to the 2001 Nobel Prize awarded to Paul Nurse, Tim Hunt and Lee Hartwell.

This anniversary meeting will celebrate that scientific legacy while looking firmly to the future. Advances in structural biology, quantitative imaging, genomics, proteomics and biophysics are transforming our understanding of cell-cycle regulation, revealing new mechanisms and connections with cell fate, development, ageing and genome stability.

Across 11 scientific sessions, the programme will span scales and systems: from transcriptional and proteomic regulation of proliferation to kinetochores and spindle dynamics; from mitotic entry and exit and chromosome segregation to oocyte divisions and tissue organisation. Speakers include researchers who established foundational principles in the field alongside a new generation bringing emerging approaches and perspectives to cell-cycle biology.

As throughout the Jacques Monod Conference series, discussion and participation will be central to the meeting. Talks selected from submitted abstracts, together with flash talks, poster sessions and extended discussion periods, will give early-career researchers and scientists developing new ideas, approaches and model systems a prominent place in the programme.

Forty years after the first Roscoff Cell Cycle Conference, we will bring the community together to celebrate the discoveries that shaped the field and explore the questions and technologies that will define its future.

Invited speakers (provisional titles)

Vincent Archambault (Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada) 
Phosphoregulation of the nucleolus in Drosophila 

David Barford (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK) 
Insights into mechanisms and regulation of chromosome segregation from kinetochore structures 

Francis Barr (University of Oxford, Oxford, UK) 
Temporal stress as a universal activator of p53-dependent and independent cell cycle checkpoint responses 

Renata Basto (Institut Curie, Paris, France) 
GEN1 nuclease safeguards cells after whole genome duplication against mitotic bypass and replication stress sensitivity 

Yohanns Bellaïche (Institut Curie, Paris, France) 
Control of epithelial tissue cell density 

Pascal Bernard (University of Lyon, Lyon, France) 
Understanding How Condensin Folds a Chromatinized Genome into Mitotic Chromosomes 

Arshad Desai (UC San Diego, La Jolla, USA) 
Pathways for spindle assembly 

Julien Dumont (Institut Jacques Monod, Paris, France) 
Assembling the Oocyte Kinetochore 

Matilde Galli (Hubrecht Institute, Utrecht, Netherlands) 
Knowing when and how to divide: Mechanisms of cell-cycle remodelling in C. elegans 

Monica Gotta (ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland) 
UBAP2 and the Hippo Pathway: mechanisms of cell-cycle regulation 

Charlotte Kirchhelle (ENS Lyon, Lyon, France) 
Divide and polarise - a geometric patterning mechanism during plant morphogenesis 

Tomomi Kiyomitsu (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Okinawa, Japan) 
Spatiotemporal distribution and function of dynein during cleavage division in large medaka embryos 

Lara Kruger (Institut Curie, Paris, France) 
From polarity to cell fate: untangling asymmetric cell division in mammals using synthetic biology 

Thierry Lorca (CRBM, Montpellier, France) 
Tight regulation of the kinase–phosphatase balance in meiotic progression of Xenopus oocytes 

Adele Marston (University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK) 
Specialised Cell Cycle Regulation in Meiosis 

Tobias Meyer (Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, USA) 
Cell-cycle entry control by regulation of Cdk, Cdc7, APC/C(Cdh1) and E2F activity and Rb concentration 

Gabriel Neurohr (ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland) 
Size Matters - Nuclear Meltdown in Senescence 

Tomoko Nishiyama (Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan) 
Cohesin Subtype–Specific Regulation of Higher-Order Chromatin Architecture 

Paul Nurse (The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK) 
New Perspectives on CDKs and Cell Cycle Control 

Simone Reber (Max Planck Institute, Berlin, Germany) 
The physical chemistry of the cytoplasm as a cell cycle variable 

Marie-Emilie Terret (Collège de France, Paris, France) 
Mechanics of Oocyte Divisions 

Iva Tolić (Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia) 
Mitotic Origins of Genome Instability and Drug Resistance 

Elçin Ünal (University of California, Berkeley, USA) 
Nuclear Rejuvenation During Meiosis 

Katja Wassmann (Institut Jacques Monod, Paris, France) 
Coordinating meiotic cell cycle progression with chromosome segregation in vertebrate oocytes 

Sophie Zinn-Justin (CEA, Gif-sur-Yvette, France) 
Intrinsically disordered regions in DNA repair: from structural mechanisms to the design of artificial binders 

Deadline for application: January 24, 2027

Registration fee (including board and lodging)

• 570 € for PhD students 
• 790 € for other participants 

Application for registration 

The total number of participants is limited to 115 and all participants are expected to attend for the whole duration of the conference. Selection is made on the basis of the affinity of potential participants with the topics of the conference. Scientists and PhD Students interested in the meeting should deposit online before the deadline: 

• their curriculum vitae
• the proof of their student status
• the list of their main publications for the 3 last years
• the abstract of their presentation.

The abstract must respect the following template:

• First line: title
• Second line: list of authors
• Third line: author's addresses
• Fourth line: e-mail of the presenting author

Abstract should not exceed 600 words. No figures.

After the deadline, the organizers will select the participants. Except in some particular cases approved by the Chairperson, it is recommended that all selected participants present their work during the conference, either in poster form or by a brief in- session talk. The organizers choose the form in which the presentations are made. No payment will be sent with application. Information on how and when to pay will be mailed in due time to those selected.