Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting - June 28-July 1, 2015

New Biological Frontiers Illuminated by Molecular Sensors and Actuators

Tuesday Speaker Abstracts

Imaging Spatiotemporal Dynamics of the Invisible Protein Interactome Stephen Michnick . Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada.

The last decade has witnessed great innovation in methods to detect the spatiotemporal dynamics of molecular and particularly protein-protein interactions in living cells and organisms. At the same time, our global understanding of protein interactomes suggests that protein-protein interactions are highly interconnected, perhaps forming irreducibly complex networks. This goes for interactions between post-translational modifying enzymes and their substrates. The seeming complexity of interactomes implies that development of truly specific reporters of any interactions in the cell is impossible; that in fact what these reporters detect are many “invisible” interactions among proteins having nothing to do with what we think we are detecting. In this presentation I will provide examples, comparing proteome wide detection versus specific reporters of signal transduction, which illustrate how complex a signaling interactome can be. I will then present the argument that lack of specificity of reporters does not render them useless. Used wisely reporters provide a window into the richness of biochemical activities in living cells and new ideas about how matter is organized in living processes.

Bringing Molecular Mechanisms to Life with 3D Animation Janet Iwasa . University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA.

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the use of 3D animation as a means to communicate complex biological processes to a wide range of audiences. Using animation software from the entertainment industry, it is possible to synthesize data from diverse sources to create a coherent and contextualized view of how molecular and cellular systems operate. These visualizations have served not only to make molecular concepts more accessible to students and the public at large, but have also proven to be extremely useful for researchers seeking to build and refine their hypotheses. In an effort to make animation tools more readily available to researchers, we have embarked on a project to create a novel molecular biology-centric 3d animation application, called Molecular Flipbook, created specifically for cell and molecular biologists. In addition to provide an intuitive means to create molecular animations, Molecular Flipbook also allows users to share and view animations on an online database.

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