Physical and Computational Tools in Biology Symposium
An inspiring and diverse day of science organized by Dario and Fouzia
On September 26th, Fouzia and Dario hosted an international symposium, with the theme ‘Physical and Computational Tools in Biology’. As biophysicists in a clinical microbiology environment, they understand the potential of biophysical tools and computation expertise to help advance biological and medical research. This resonated within the research community in Umeå and beyond: over 70 participants attended, including several international speakers. There was a great variation of topics in a program packed with many inspiring keynote lectures and short talks.
The international keynote speakers comprised Ricardo Henriquez, Peter Hinterdorfer and Adolfo Poma. Ricardo Henriquez from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (Portugal) shared his cutting-edge computational approaches to obtain superresolution images of biological samples without advanced microscopy setups. With this goal, his group has created a public and free repository which can be accessed by other researchers around the world. Peter Hinterdorfer from the Johannes Kepler University (Linz, Austria) showed how his group elucidated differences in the dynamic and binding behavior of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein using ultrafast atomic force microscopy. Finally, the study of spike interaction was also touched by Adolfo Poma, from the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research (PAN, Poland), in his talk centered around new approaches for the simulation of large proteins at the quasi-atomic level using GöMARTINI simulations.
Equally excellent keynote talks were also provided by invited speakers from Umeå University. Lars Anders Carlson presented the use of CryoEM for the study of replication complexes in viruses. Magnus Andersson described how optical tweezers were used in the characterization of the mechanical properties of bacterial flagella and how they can aid bacterial infection. Finally, Laura Carroll presented the importance of a meaningful taxonomical organization in bacteria and the strategies to achieve it.
The day also included two sessions of short talks, which were not any less packed with interesting topics from local and international researchers. One highlight was Orane Guillaume-Gentil (Laboratory of Systems Biology and Genetics, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland) who presented the endless possibilities of a combination of microfluidics and atomic force microscopy. Among other, this technology gave birth to LiveSeq, a single-cell transcriptomics approach, which employs FluidFM probes to take small biopsies of live cells, in their native environment.
The day ended with a poster session where many participants of different backgrounds could mingle and a presentation of the Computational Analytics Support Platform (CASP) available at Umeå University. It was a day with an exceptional diversity of topics brought closely together, which undoubtedly led to inspiration for exciting new research and great networking opportunities for most participants. Looking back at the program and the participants alone can be a great source of inspiration. Thank you for and congratulations with this successful event, Dario and Fouzia!