Applied Sciences Webinar | In Silico Methods to Unravel the Mysteries of Protein Biological Function, 27 April 2023

Proteins play a key role in every biological process that takes place in our body, from transporting molecules across our cells and providing mechanical strength to our tissues, to transmitting neurochemical signals between neurons and recognizing external pathogens. This extremely large variety of biological functions is encoded in the surprisingly small alphabet of only twenty amino acids. How is that possible? How can a simple sequence of amino acids lead to such well-defined biological tasks?

The answer lies in the fact that this sequence actually exists as a corporeal structure with an evolutionary-conserved shape and the specific ability to perform biologically relevant motions. This opens several fascinating research questions that the scientific community has been trying to answer in the last half century, such as the following: how exactly is an amino acid sequence translated into a specific protein structure? How does the structure change its conformation during the protein functional cycle or under external perturbations? Can we identify the relevant motions that enable a protein to perform its biological tasks? What are the causes of disease-associated protein malfunctions at both the sequence, structure, and dynamics level?

Advances in computational approaches in the last few decades have made it feasible to answer some of these questions, by exploiting methodologies such as Molecular Dynamics (MD), Normal Mode Analysis (NMA), and Elastic Network Models (ENMs). In this webinar, we will discuss some of the most recent applications of these computational approaches to unravel the mysteries of the biological function of specific protein systems.

Date: 27 April 2023 at 01:30 p.m. CEST | 7:30 a.m. EDT | 7:30 p.m. CST Asia
Webinar ID: 836 7194 4334

Program

Speaker/Presentation	Time in CEST	Time in CST
Dr. Domenico Scaramozzino Chair Introduction	1:30–1:40 p.m.	7:30–7:40 p.m.
Dr. Michal Cifra Structural and dynamic response of cytoskeletal proteins to intense electric field	1:40–2:05 p.m.	7:40–8:05 p.m.
Short Q&A	2:05–2:10 p.m.	8:05–8:10 p.m.
Dr. Laura Orellana Sampling protein conformational landscapes: MD versus coarse-grained models	2:10–2:35 p.m.	8:10–8:35 p.m.
Short Q&A	2:35–2:40 p.m.	8:35–8:40 p.m.
Prof. Patrick Senet (Effective) Free-energy landscape of an Intrinsically Disordered Protein: alpha-synuclein	2:40–3:05 p.m.	8:40–9:05 p.m.
Short Q&A	3:05–3:10 p.m.	9:05–9:10 p.m.
General Discussion Session	3:10–3:30 p.m.	9:10–9:30 p.m.
Dr. Domenico Scaramozzino Closing of Webinar	3:30 p.m.	9:30 p.m.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on how to join the webinar. Registrations with academic institutional email addresses will be prioritized.

Unable to attend? Register anyway and we will let you know when the recording is available to watch.

Webinar chair and keynote speakers:

Dr. Domenico Scaramozzino, Department of Oncology-Pathology, Karolinska Institutet, Solna, Sweden
Dr. Michal Cifra, Institute of Photonics and Electronics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia
Dr. Laura Orellana, Protein Dynamics and Mutation Lab, Karolinska Institute, Sweden
Prof. Patrick Senet, Laboratoire ICB, UMR 6303 CNRS-Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France

Relevant Special Issue:
“Computational Approaches for Protein Dynamics and Function”
Guest Editors: Prof. Dr. Robert Jernigan and Dr. Domenico Scaramozzino
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2023