Biophysical Society Newsletter - October 2014

11

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

2014

OCTOBER

Subgroups

Q: What got you into science? Singular event, or a process? It was a process. As a child of the 1950’s, the space program drove me towards technology. I started out in automotive engineering at Bradley Univer- sity because I loved working on cars. However, after a month of learning about threads and ball bearings, I was bored. My toughest and most interesting class was chemistry. I could see that the subject was so deep that I would never get all the way to the bottom of it. With this in mind, I decided to switch to chemistry as a major and never looked back. Professor Singh opened my eyes to physical chemistry, and Professor De Pinto to biochemistry. I owe my transition to my UNC colleague Linda Spremulli . When I was an assistant professor, Linda would say, “Gary all that enthalpy and en- tropy of protein folding that your group measures in buffer is great, but cells are crowded”. I let this sink in for several years. After reading a slew of Allen Minton papers, I thought this would be a challenging new direction. Q: Tell us about how your research work has migrated to Biophysics in vivo (BIV)?

Motility The Motility Subgroup Symposium on Saturday, February 7, will begin at 1:00 pm and include the speakers listed below. For specific times and location, please refer to the Motility Subgroup web page which can be found at www.biophysics. org. Click 'About Us' and then click 'Subgroups'. Confirmed speakers for the symposium include: Erika Holzbaur , Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania; Richard McKenney , University of California, San Francisco; Joseph M. Muretta , University of Minnesota; Sivaraj Sivara- makishnan , University of Michigan; and Christine Cremo , University of Nevada School of Medicine. The Business Meeting will take place at 3:30 pm, and the keynote will be presented by David Warshaw , University of Vermont, at 5:20 pm. We encourage you to support the Motility Subgroup Symposium. Membership is free for students and $20 for Biophysical Society members. The registration form can be found on the Society website. Go to 'About Us' and then 'Subgroups'. Membership allows sponsorship of the Student Research Achievement Award, ensures ample seating for the session, as well as snacks and more coffee for attendees of the symposium. Looking forward to seeing you in Baltimore! — Jeffrey Moore , Motility Subgroup Chair BIV Keeping up with the Crowd For this issue, we interviewed one of the pio- neers of in-cell NMR spectroscopy, Gary Pielak , University of North Carolina (UNC), where he is currently the Glen H. Elder Jr. Distinguished Professor. He shares what got him into the field as well as some practical advice.

Q: Tell us about an open problem of central importance in BIV.

In my opinion, understanding native quinary interactions, as defined by McConkey , is the next challenge. We are beginning to understand how the intracellular environment affects biophysics. Now it is time to understand how the inherent organization of the cytoplasm affects biophysics.

Q: What advice can you give young biophysicists interested in research?

PIs nowadays are pressured into writing more proposals and spending less time working with their students. Find a mentor who will spend time to train you! — Martin Gruebele , Chair-Elect of BIV Subgroup