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2019 Biological CryoEM workshop video and photos released

Posted on July 3, 2019

Thanks to all for attending the 2019 Workshop on Advancement and Challenges of Biological cryoEM in Hong Kong.

Workshop photos

http://memprotein.org/cryoem-workshop/workshop-photos/

Video, session 3: Discussion on building a Sustainable Cryo-EM Community

Chair:

  • Yifan Cheng, University of California, San Diego

Panelists:

  • Lu Gan, National University of Singapore
  • Peiyi Wang, Southern University of Science and Technology
  • Yong Zi Tan, Columbia University / New York Structural Biology Center
  • Alex Noble, New York Structutral Biology Center

2019 Workshop on Advances and Challenges of Biological CryoEM

Posted on March 22, 2019


(High resolution video can be accessed here: https://cryoem101.org/chapter-1/)

The recent integration of new developments in electron microscopes, direct electron detection cameras, and advances in image analysis methods are allowing the expansion of high resolution structural molecular biology in new and exciting directions by direct visualization of macromolecules and their complexes. The next decades will be dominated by the study of protein-protein, protein-nucleic acid complexes, molecular machines, and their conformational changes in ways that were impossible before due to their size and/or the need to study them in crystalline form. In addition, developments in many aspects of electron microscopy are providing new tools for the study of biological molecules from the single molecule to the cellular level. The inaugural workshop on Advancement and Challenges of Biological CryoEM will address key developments in this fast advancing field, provide an opportunity to discuss the state of the field and exchange views on advancement and challenges of biological cryo-electron microscopy, and foster the research collaboration of biological and biomedical sciences, particularly in Hong Kong, China, and Asia. The workshop will be hold the day after the GRC Conference on three-dimension electron microscopy in Hong Kong, which is the premier cryoEM meeting, to encourage the participation of GRC attendees.

Visit the website »

Third Coast Workshop on Biological Cryo-EM announced for May 19, 2018

Posted on March 9, 2018

March 19, 2018 • 9:00am – 6:00pm
Gordon Center for Integrative Science, University of Chicago

 

Friends,

As announced a few months ago, a new version of our very successful Third Coast cryo-EM Workshop is being programmed for May 19th at the Gordon Center for Integrative Sciences at the University of Chicago.

Following last year format, we will have a full day of talks and discussions led by key luminaries in the application of cryo electron microscopy and associated computational approaches to the structure of macromolecules, macromolecular complexes and subcellular structures. In this version of the program (included below) we are privileged to have Prof. Michael Rossmann (Purdue University) as this year’s keynote lecturer.

The website is now live at http://memprotein.org/cryoem-workshop and includes a registration link. There is no cost to attend the Workshop. However, this year, we will close the registration process as soon as the capacity of the auditorium is reached. For that reason, we strongly encourage you to register early, given the unexpected (overwhelming!) response last year. Furthermore, we strongly encourage all attendants to submit posters for discussion during the Workshop. This is a fantastic opportunity to show your work to a receptive community, whether it is ready for prime time, or not.

Given the stellar roster of speakers, we expect to have an exciting workshop where the key cryo-EM topics of the moment will be presented and debated. Personally, we are very much looking forward to seeing you and interacting with you later in May.

All the best,

The Organizing Committee

Eduardo Perozo
Alfonso Mondragon
Valerie Tokars
Bobby Kasthuri

Program, registration, and poster at the website: http://memprotein.org/cryoem-workshop/

Final Program for III Frontiers in Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics Announced

Posted on November 8, 2017

Friends,

As we get everything in order to welcome you this Friday to our Frontiers in Membrane Proteins Structural Dynamics Conference, we wanted to share with you the final program of the meeting.

The next few days promise to be a truly exceptional survey of membrane proteins structure and dynamics today. A veritable state of the art of the field. With our two keynote speakers (Chris Miller and Olga Boudker) leading 8 individual mini-symposia.

Personally, we are very much looking forward to seeing you and interacting with you later this week.

All the best,

The Organizing Committee

 

III Frontiers in membrane Protein Structural Dynamics
APS Conference Center, Argonne National Lab

Friday, November 10

7:45 Continental Breakfast, APS 402 Atrium
8:15 Eduardo Perozo (University of Chicago), Stephen Streiffer (Advanced Photon Source)
Welcome and overall perspective

Session I: ABC Transporters and Partners: Dynamics at the Edge of Stability

8:25 Christine Ziegler (Universität Regensburg)
Introduction
8:30 Doug Rees (Caltech University)
ABC transporters and the alt-access movement
8:55 Show-Ling Shyng (Oregon Health & Science University)
Illumination of the SUR1-Kir6.2 partnership in KATP channels by single-particle cryo-EM
9:20 Heather Pinkett (Northwestern University)
The role of ABC transporters in nutrient uptake and pathogenesis
9:45 Break, APS 402 Atrium

Session II: Technology Advances in Protein Expression and Engineering

10:25 Chris Ahern (University of Iowa)
Introduction
10:30 Anthony Kossiakoff (University of Chicago)
Synthetic Antibodies to facilitate structural analyses of functional conformational intermediates by both crystallography and Cryo-EM
10:55 Bill Clemons (Caltech University)
Solving the membrane protein expression problem
11:20 Andrew Kruse (Harvard University)
New technologies to interrogate membrane protein function
11:45 Lunch, APS 402 – Lower Gallery

Session III: Pumping Ions and Other Flotsam

1:00 Francisco Bezanilla (University of Chicago)
Introduction
1:05 Bernd Fakler (University of Freiburg, Germany)
Native PMCAs – proteomic surprises with old Ca2+-pumps
1:30 Miguel Holmgren (National Institutes of Health)
Dynamics of the Na/K ATPase with the binding/unbinding of external Na ions
1:55 Huan Rui (University of Chicago)
Probing the cycling mechanism of the P-type ATPase: Insights from kinetic modeling simulations
2:20 Break, APS 402 Atrium

Session IV: Poster Rapid Fire

2:50 Yeong-Kyun Shin (Iowa State University)
Introduction
2:55 Poster presenters
2 minute talks

Session V: Keynote Speaker 1

4:45 A Brief Vignette Honoring Jean Chin (Eduardo Perozo, University of Chicago)
5:00 Alessio Accardi (Weill Cornell University)
Introduction
5:10 Christopher Miller (Brandeis University)
How channel crystallography made me stupid
6:00 Dinner, APS 402 – Lower Gallery
Posters, APS 402 – E1100/E1200

Saturday, November 11

Session VI: Calculating Conformational Changes: At the Bleeding Edge

7:45 Continental Breakfast, APS 402 Atrium
8:25 Wonpil Im (LeHigh University)
Introduction
8:30 Benoit Roux (University of Chicago)
C-type Inactivation and the Constricted-Like Conformations of the Selectivity Filter of K+ Channels
8:55 Michael Grabe (University of California, San Francisco)
TMEM16 lipid scrambles bend membranes to get things done
9:20 Jose Faraldo-Gomez (National Institutes of Health)
The Dos and Don’ts of the Alternating-Access Mechanism: Lessons from the Sodium-Calcium Exchanger
9:45 Break, APS 402 Atrium

Session VII: Protein Motion Within a Field: Ins and Outs of Voltage-dependent Gating

10:25 Sudha Chakrapani (Case Western Reserve University)
Introduction
10:30 Jian Yang (Columbia University)
Cryo-EM structure of a eukaryotic cyclic nucleotide-gated channel
10:55 Bonnie Wallace (Birbeck, University of London)
Structural, Function and Disease-Related Aspects of Sodium Channel Voltage-Gating
11:20 Francisco Bezanilla (University of Chicago)
Voltage sensors and membrane capacitance
11:45 Rama Ranganthan (University of Chicago)
Protein mechanics: the link between structure, function, and evolution
12:10 Lunch, APS 402 – Lower Gallery

Session VIII: Structure and Dynamics with Few Molecules (or a Lot)

1:25 Valeria Vasquez (University of Tennessee, Memphis)
Introduction
1:30 Robert Fischetti (APS, Argonne National Lab)
Serial crystallography with monochromatic and polychromatic X-ray beams, and the APS Upgrade
1:55 Yeon-Kyun Shin (Iowa State University)
Zooming in on single vehicle fusion
2:20 Simon Scheuring (Weill Cornell University)
High-Speed Atomic Force Microscopy: A New Tool for the Study of the Dynamics of Single Unlabeled Membrane Proteins
2:45 Break, APS 402 Atrium
Posters, APS 401 – E1100/E1200

Session IX: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Conformational Changes and the Transport/Translocation Cycle

4:30 Ming Zhou (Baylor University)
Introduction
4:35 Filipo Mancia (Columbia University)
The Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Cellular Uptake of Vitamin A
5:00 Aurelio Galli (University of Vanderbilt)
Failure to Prime the Dopamine ‘Pump’ in Autism
5:25 Alessio Accardi (Weill Cornell University)
Exploring the backdoor of CLC channels and transporters: how a glutamate gets in and out of the Cl- permeation pathway
5:50 Dinner, APS 402 – Lower Gallery
Posters, APS 401 – E1100/E1200

Sunday, November 12

Session X: Structural Dynamics Through Imaging

9:00 Tobin Sosnick (University of Chicago)
Introduction
9:05 Christine Ziegler (Universität Regensburg)
Being in the right place: Localization-dependent lipid interactions in the PC2 TRP Channel
9:30 Irina Serysheva (University of Texas Houston)
Structure of IP3R Channel: Towards Understanding Gating Mechanism
9:55 Vera Moiseenkova-Bell (University of Pennsylvania)
Molecular mechanism of the TRPV2 channel pore dynamics during ligand activation
10:20 Mingley Zhao (University of Chicago)
Molecular Mechanism of SNARE Complex Disassembly
10:55 Break, APS 402 – Atrium

Session XI: Keynote Speaker 2

11:05 Robert Nakamoto (University of Virginia)
Introduction
11:15 Olga Boudker (Weill Cornell University)
Dynamic underpinnings of transport mechanism in glutamate transporters

Closing

 *Shuttle service from the guest house to the conference center will start 15 minutes prior to the start of the meeting.

*Shuttle service from the conference center to the guest house will run for 15 minutes after the poster session (9:00pm).

Announcing Frontiers in Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics 2017

Posted on June 23, 2017

Every other year, as part of our NIH sponsored Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics Consortium we gather in Chicago for a conference to discuss the most exciting aspects at the frontiers of membrane protein structure functional and dynamics. We (and the NIH) see this as gathering of the leaders in the field and a great opportunity to interface the advances of the Consortium with the community at large.

We are happy to announce the newest version of our very successful “Frontiers in Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics” meeting. It will take place on November 10-12 at the Advanced Photon Source Conference center at Argonne National Lab. We are still finalizing the program but it is expected to have a full slate of very exciting talks. The conference will begin on the evening of Friday, November 10th and end in the afternoon on Sunday, the 12th. There will be a total of 8 symposia sessions, and two keynote talks, bookending the meeting, plus an extensive poster session accompanied by a “flash session” where poster presenters will summarize their work in 1 slide/2 min micro talks.

As before, we hope to encourage attendance of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows by having a low non-speaker participant fee and offering travel awards to students, postdocs, and new faculty.

An on-line registration site will be available soon for this meeting at: http://memprotein.org/meeting

Looking very much forward to have you in the Chicago area in November!

With our best wishes (the organizing committee),

Eduardo Perozo
Hassane Mchaourab
Robert Nakamoto
Robert Fischetti
Olga Boudker
Chris Ahern

Third Coast Workshop on Biological Cryo-EM announced for March 3, 2017

Posted on January 9, 2017

March 3, 2017 • 9:00am – 6:00pm
Saieh Hall, University of Chicago

In the past few years, a revolution in cryo electron microscopy has taken structural biology by storm. The recent integration of new developments in electron microscopes, direct electron detection cameras, and advances in image analysis methods are allowing the expansion of high resolution structural molecular biology in new and exciting directions by direct visualization of macromolecules and their complexes. The next decades will be dominated by the study of protein-protein, protein-nucleic acid complexes, molecular machines, and their conformational changes in ways that were impossible before due to their size and/or the need to study them in crystalline form. In addition, developments in many aspects of electron microscopy are providing new tools for the study of biological molecules from the single molecule to the cellular level. The Third Coast Workshop on Biological Cryo-EM will address key developments in this fast advancing field and will provide scientists from different disciplines with an opportunity to discuss the state of the field and exchange views from both experimental and computational perspectives.

Program, registration, and poster at the website: http://memprotein.org/cryoem-workshop/


NAMD Developer Workshop on May 26-27 in Chicago, IL

Posted on May 15, 2016

We are pleased to invite you to the first edition of the NAMD developer workshop jointly organized by the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the University of Chicago, and to be held on the campus of the University of Chicago.

This workshop is intended to gather the community of NAMD developers for fruitful exchange on current and future developments of the program. It will consist of short presentations aimed at covering practical coding aspects, ongoing developments, architecture specificities, implementations of novel algorithms, as well as broader topics, notably future directions of the program and the parallel programming environment charm++ it uses.

This workshop is not intended for scientific presentations about applications, although illustrative applications of on-going code developments would be welcome.

The workshop will be held at the Gordon Center for Integrative Science on the University of Chicago campus and is sponsored by:

National Institute of General Medical Sciences
NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics (NIH 9P41GM104601)
NIH Hands-on Workshops on Computational Biophysics (NIH 1R25GM103771-01)
The Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics Consortium (NIH grant NIGMS U54-GM087519)

For more information and registration, visit this page.

Active MPSDC participation in the Biophysical Society 60th Annual Meeting in 2016

Posted on October 13, 2015


MPSDC Awards: Francisco Bezanilla, Past President presenting an award to Robert Nakamoto.
(Click to enlarge)

The Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics Consortium is always very well represented at the annual Biophysical Society meeting, as can be seen by Klaus Schulten‘s National Lecture in 2015 as well as at the level of participants in a remarkably large number of workshops, symposia, and presentations. This is also reflected in Consortium members being actively involved at the leadership level, including Francisco Bezanilla‘s tenure as Biophysical Society President from 2012 to 2014 and Robert Nakamoto and Olga Boudker‘s service in the current Biophysical Society leadership council.

On August 31, 2015 the Biophysical Society announced that MPSDC Chair Eduardo Perozo was elected as a 2016 Society Fellow. This award honors the Society’s distinguished members who have demonstrated excellence in science, contributed to the expansion of the field of biophysics, and supported the Biophysical Society. The Fellows will be honored at the Awards Ceremony during the Biophysical Society’s 60th Annual Meeting on Monday February 29, 2016 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. Perozo was elected for his leadership and fundamental contributions in ion channel biophysics.

At next year’s meeting in Los Angeles, MPSDC members will participate in a number of specialty symposia and workshops organized by the Biophysical society (more information on the nature of these symposia and workshops can be found on the Biophysical Society meeting website here). We would like to highlight the following in particular (though there are and will certainly be more ways in which Consortium members are involved with the meeting):

  • Francisco Bezanilla (University of Chicago) is participating in a symposium on Voltage Sensing and Gating.

  • Olga Boudker (Weill Cornell Medical College) is receiving the Michael and Kate Bárány Award during the meeting’s award symposium. During this session, award recipients are recognized and each give a short talk about the work for which they are being recognized. Congratulations, Olga!

  • Yifan Cheng (University of California, San Francisco) is co-chairing the Cryo-EM Subgroup 2016 Symposium

  • Claudio Grosman(UIUC) is participating in a symposium on Pentameric Ligand-gated Ion Channels: New Insights from Structure and Function.

  • Benoît Roux (University of Chicago) is participating in a workshop about Computational Methods for Ion Permeation and Selectivity

  • Emad Tajkhorshid (UIUC) will once again be chairing the Permeation & Transport Subgroup 2015 Symposium. He chaired the same subgroup last year.

Last year, MPSDC member and one of our keynote speakers at Frontiers in Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics 2014 Klaus Schulten (UIUC) gave the prestigious National Lecture. The National Lecturer is the highest award given each year by the Biophysical Society. Dr. Schulten’s 2015 National Lecture lecture can be viewed in full here.

See also: interviews from the 59th Biophysical Society Meeting with 2015 National Lecturer Klaus Schulten and Harel Weinstein.

See also: interviews from the 58th Biophysical Society Meeting with Francisco Bezanilla, Past President and Robert Nakamoto, Chair of the 2014 BPS Program Committee.

MPSDC Chair Eduardo Perozo to speak at Frontiers in Integral Membrane Protein Structural Biology in Oxford

Posted on October 1, 2015

Structural biology of membrane proteins, particularly from higher eukaryotes, has been transformed in the last two years. New and improved technologies such as electron microscopy and free electron lasers have led to the rapid increase in the number of structures solved and the complexity of these structures. This symposium will highlight advances in technology, celebrate the unprecedented advances in understanding of membrane protein structure and function, and look to the future for this rapidly developing field.

Frontiers in Integral Membrane Protein Structural Biology 2015 is set to take place in Oxford, United Kingdom from October 5th until the 7th.

MPSDC Chair Eduardo Perozo will participate with a lecture titled “Asymmetric Conformational Transition Underlies Mg2+-Driven Gating in CorA.”

Former MPSDC-sponsored Frontiers in Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics conference speakers Robert Stroud (who gave of the two 2014 keynote lectures) and Robert Tampé are also participating.

Learn more about the symposium »

MPSDC members presenting at Membrane Proteins: Structure and Function in Suzhou, China

Posted on May 5, 2015

Membrane Proteins: Structure and Function is a conference featuring eight oral sessions and one poster session covering the latest findings across many topics in membrane proteins. It is set to take place on May 11-15, 2015 in Suzhou, China.

The conference was co-organized by MPSDC members Robert Nakamoto (University of Virginia) and Ming Zhou (Baylor College of Medicine). In addition, the following Consortium members are presenting at the conference:

  • Volker Dötsch, Goethe Universität Frankfurt
    Abstract title:Structure determination of membrane proteins by NMR spectroscopy based on selective labelling approaches and cell-free protein synthesis

  • Eduardo Perozo, The University of Chicago
    Abstract title:The Structural Basis of Charge Translocation in Voltage Sensing Domains

  • Emad Tajkhorshid, University Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    Abstract title:Characterizing Large-­scale Conformational Changes in Membrane Transporters at High Spatial and Temporal Resolutions with Advanced Computational Methods

  • Francis Valiyaveetil, Oregon Health & Science University
    Abstract title:Probing Functional Mechanisms in Ion Channels and Transporters using Unnatural Mutagenesis.

  • Ming Zhou, Baylor College of Medicine
    Abstract title:Structure of a Mammalian Stearoyl-CoA Desaturase
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