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BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
2
AUGUST
2017
BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY
Officers
President
Lukas Tamm
President-Elect
Angela Gronenborn
Past-President
Suzanne Scarlata
Secretary
Frances Separovic
Treasurer
Kalina Hristova
Council
Zev Bryant
Jane Clarke
Bertrand Garcia-Moreno
Teresa Giraldez
Ruben Gonzalez, Jr.
Ruth Heidelberger
Robert Nakamoto
Arthur Palmer
Gabriela Popescu
Marina Ramirez-Alvarado
Erin Sheets
Joanna Swain
Biophysical Journal
Jane Dyson
Editor-in-Chief
Society Office
Ro Kampman
Executive Officer
Newsletter
Executive Editor
Rosalba Kampman
Managing Editor
Beth Staehle
Contributing Writers and
Department Editors
Dorothy Chaconas
Daniel McNulty
Laura Phelan
Raelle Reid
Caitlin Simpson
Elizabeth Vuong
Ellen Weiss
Production
Ray Wolfe
Catie Curry
The
Biophysical Society Newsletter
(ISSN
0006-3495) is published eleven times
per year, January-December, by the
Biophysical Society, 5515 Security Lane,
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Biophysicist in Profile
JOANNA TRYLSKA
Joanna Trylska
“I grew up in Warsaw when Poland was a communist country,” shares
Joanna Trylska
of the University of Warsaw. “However, because my father
was a scientist we also spent some time abroad. We lived in Mérida, Ven-
ezuela, because of my father’s postdoctoral work and later in the United
Kingdom because my father worked at the University of Warwick.”
Trylska’s father was a theoretical physicist in the faculty of physics at the
University of Warsaw. He specialized in solid state physics, specifically in
the theory of hopping conductivity in semiconductors. “Unfortunately,
my dad died when I was only 12 so he did not have a chance to influence
my decisions regarding the future scientific path. However, there was
probably an indirect influence due to the life we led,” she says. “My mom
is a mechanical engineer — now retired. She worked at the first computer
facilities in Warsaw, programming in assembly language.”
In high school, Trylska excelled in math, physics, and biology. She also
enjoyed these subjects more than others, so she knew that she would pur-
sue a career that involved them somehow. “I always wanted to have a job
that involves learning new things and exploring,” she explains, “however,
I did not dream of being a scientist, it just happened. At one point I real-
ized that this is just my way of living and looking at things, so a different
job was not of any interest to me.”
When she entered the University of Warsaw for her undergraduate stud-
ies, the biophysics department seemed like the right fit for her to connect
her interests in physics, math, and biology. She earned her master’s degree
in physics with a specialization in molecular biophysics. She went on to
pursue her PhD at the same university in the lab of
Maciej Geller
, which
was in a group supervised by
Bogdan Lesyng
. “This was an excellent War-
saw theoretical biophysics group that provided me with great education
and formed the grounds for my future computational work,” she shares.
After completing her graduate studies, she
worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of
J. Andrew McCammon
at the University of
California, San Diego. She learned how to
study the dynamics of large macromolecular
assemblies using computer simulation. “I
learned various multi-scale molecular modeling
techniques and developed reduced models for
molecular dynamics simulations of proteins and nucleic acids,” she says.
“With these models I investigated microsecond-long functional dynamics
of the ribosome. I also explored how ribosome large-scale motions modu-
late its electrostatic features and how electrostatics influences ribosome
self-assembly. Further, I determined the dynamics of the HIV-1 protease
functional flaps that enable access of drugs into the binding site and simu-
lated association of peptide substrates and inhibitors with this enzyme.”
“
I realized that this is just my
way of living and looking at
things, so a different job was
not of any interest to me.
”
— Trylska