2010 Biophysical Society

The intrinsically disordered protein subgroup is only ~four years old but already is in the position of providing some of the most interesting and topical material at the BPS meeting.  This year is no different and those responsible should be recognized for their hard work.

As an educator I am always particularly interested to see what is going on in this area, which explores all aspects and roles of proteins or protein subdomains that have no native structure, in what on the surface is a direct violation of some basic tenets of biochemistry still taught to undergraduates everywhere.  After her illuminating talk on a protein (a bacterial heat shock protein) that assumes its protective cellular role only when unfolded (usually under oxidative stress conditions), Ursula Jakob admitted to teaching her intro-biochem students the dogma that her talk directly contradicts!  I hope that most of my students will “grow up” in a scientific environment in which the often-incorrect classical dogma is either constantly under deconstruction or just thrown out in favor of a more expansive and current, evidence-based view, and the IDP subgroup is constantly serving up such cases.

The BPS meeting is an idea well for me, since I was not trained as a biologist in the least and I see new things that challenge my point of view every time I am here.  With all due respect to award winners, each year, the best and most provocative talks are presented on Saturday in the subgroup meetings.  The rooms are small and usually packed, and the publicity for these talks by the Society is not usually so large, but Saturday is the one day that no one should miss.

That said: they need to keep the talks on time, since I am about to run into a conflict betweek Kate’s getting her travel award and a talk I really need to hear.

We learned a lot at the first symposium that we attended (Membrane Biophysics). We got some great food at the opening mixer and we are off to dinner with the IDP sub-group. Check out the photos of our first day!

Kate enjoying the food

Quite a crowd

Carving the meat

Testing out the local produce at the farmers market

the hotel Metropolis!

got here fine (C, H and C) and will be rested for the first day tomorrow. took BART down here from SFO; functional public transportation is quite civilized.

more tomorrow once we are on west coast time…

Casey, Heather and I depart for San Francisco around 6:00 today. I have been busy using the itinerary planner to decide what talks I want to hear during the meeting. On Sunday, I am excited to attend the Saturday symposium of the Intrinsically Disordered Protein Subgroup. I am eager to meet our collaborator Sonia Longhi, who has been sending us protein mutants for the past few years, and also to attend the dinner of the Intrinsically Disordered Protein Subgroup.

As Kate wrote, we are both looking forward to attending talks about topics that are unfamiliar to us. Personally, I want to learn more about Bioenergetics and Biological Fluorescence. I also plan to attend talks by professors who work at schools that I have applied to.

Today I found out that my cousin’s husband, Marcus Collins, will be presenting a poster at the meeting. Make sure to check out poster B323 on Wednesday at 10:30am and ask him some tough questions.

It’s time for some last minute packing. I still need to transfer files from Haverford’s computer system to my laptop, so that I can run some MD simulations while at the conference…

looks like it’s going to rain; bring your umbrellas everyone!

Before we get going, we should acknowledge those who have made this trip possible, funding and otherwise!

I have no “commercial interests” on file with the Biophysical Society, which in principle means that I can be trusted to look at people’s work without trying to co-opt it for my own nefarious uses (although my feeling is that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery).  Scientific research is always a winding road with many twists and turns, so a deconstruction of any particular project will reveal many monetary and intellectual contributions.  So here goes:

• The National Institute of General Medical Sciences will pay for most of the expenses on this trip.  Partly as a result of the Congressional stimulus package and the big bump it gave to NIH, I was the recipient of an R15 grant last fall which includes travel money for both conference and collaborative purposes.
• The first few years of my research group have been bankrolled by Haverford College and grants from the Dreyfus Foundation (through a grant program which was a casualty of the financial crash) and Research Corporation, who funded Connor’s and Heather’s summer work in my lab.
• Kate is the recipient of a Student Travel Award from the Biophysical Society; her summer research was funded by a grant from HHMI to Haverford.

The work that my students will present has been helped along by many contributions from my department and others, especially Profs. Karin Akerfeldt, Robert Fairman, and their technician extraordinaire, Bashkim Kokona.  Connor’s project is the product of an international collaboration: you will hear more about our collaborators as the meeting progresses.

Of course, there will be other non-academic activities besides the very nice list that Heather posted.  One of our fellow bloggers has noted that meetings like this one are often major loci for drinking and other social activities, and given that we all are 21 or over (thank goodness, this has not always been the case for my research group), there will probably be some of that going on.  One highly recommended, yet quite funky, venue for food and drink in SF is Frjtz, a Belgian-style beer/frites/mussels/otherwise totally fantastic and casual place with two locations in SF, which we will certainly hit at some point.  It is a little beyond walking distance from Moscone but definitely worth the trip.

Other than Frjtz, we plan to attend the by-reservation-only dinner of the Intrinsically Disordered Protein Subgroup, whose Saturday symposium Connor and I will be attending.  Those with site suggestions for social events near to Moscone are encouraged to attach comments.

We are all getting very excited for our trip to the BPS meeting. In preparation, we have begun to sift through the numerous symposia, posters, and other events and decide which ones to attend. Given that our lab’s primary focus is the study of peptides and proteins using infrared spectroscopy, we will be mostly attending those sessions that relate to this topic.  Editor’s note: we will spread out some across the conference, so the list below does not cover all the events that one or more of us will attend.

On Saturday, we plan to attend the Membrane Structure & Assembly symposium, as well as the opening mixer and Student and Minority Biophysicists Travel Awardee Reception. Kate is a recipient of one of these awards, and she has kindly agreed to let us to accompany her.

On Sunday, the fun will begin bright and early in order to attend the 8:00 am platforms on Biopolymers and Amyloids. Kate will be presenting her poster B333 at 1:45 pm, so we will definitely stick around to grill her on her data. Our afternoon activities entail attending the Platform O: Membrane Structure I.

Monday will begin with the Platform U: Membrane Active Peptides followed by the Welcome Coffee for those of us who are new members to the society. We will also probably spend some time browsing the afternoon poster session, as well as hitting up the vendors for all of their great giveaways. We are all looking forward to the National Lecture by Roger Tsien, but the trip highlight will definitely be the reception and dance that will follow. We’ve heard Casey has some amazing dance moves!  Editor’s note: watch out for the Elaine dance!

Tuesday morning will be filled with the Protein Aggregates platform and the Membrane Permeabilizers platform, with more poster viewing in the afternoon. Wednesday should be exciting as Connor and I will both be presenting posters (B127 and B97, respectively). We should have some time to kill before our flight, so we might even get to do something touristy before we head back to Haverford.

In a little over a week, three of my research students and I will head to San Francisco for the annual Biophysical Society meeting, and we each hope to offer our own unique insight into the meeting.  Three of us are flying out on Friday Feb. 19th to arrive in time for the Saturday subgroup symposia; one of us (Kate) will fly out early to visit UCSF as a possible site for grad school.  We are coming from Haverford College, just outside Philadelphia.  Hopefully the snow disaster that has landed on Philly in the past few days does not happen again next week and we make it on time!