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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.