Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. Annual Symposium in Biophysics (March 20, 2019 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/62367 62367-15355274@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, March 20, 2019 8:00am
Location: Chemistry Dow Lab
Organized By: LSA Biophysics

This year’s symposium features a Biophysics Showcase which will include speakers from biophysics core labs, a themed session entitled “Advances in Protein Design” and a poster session with poster awards. Faculty, post-docs, grad students and undergrads are all welcome to participate.

Registration opens March 27th, 2019: http://sites.lsa.umich.edu/biophysics-symposium/

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Conference / Symposium Wed, 20 Mar 2019 15:13:43 -0400 2019-03-20T08:00:00-04:00 2019-03-20T17:00:00-04:00 Chemistry Dow Lab LSA Biophysics Conference / Symposium Chemistry Dow Lab
Seminar Title: “Protein conformational change we can believe in!” (April 5, 2019 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/53451 53451-13383538@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 5, 2019 4:00pm
Location: Chemistry Dow Lab
Organized By: LSA Biophysics

ABSTRACT: Protein conformational landscapes are complex and predicting the conformational response to physiologically relevant perturbations like mutation or small molecule binding is a major challenge. Often, functionally-relevant states are nearly isoenergetic (separated in energy by a few kT, or less), meaning that at physiological temperatures, multiple conformational states populate the ensemble. Using newly developed multiconformer models of X-ray crystallography data, we have shown how population shifts can result from simple temperature perturbation. Our experience over multiple systems has demonstrated that temperature sensitive conformational states are the same ones used by evolution to create new functions, by small molecules in creating new binding sites, and by enzymes to transit through a catalytic cycle. Using an easily controllable physical perturbation (temperature) to predict the conformational response to physiological perturbations suggests the specific conformations to enforce at allosteric sites to achieve long-range control over protein activity.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 03 Apr 2019 15:41:52 -0400 2019-04-05T16:00:00-04:00 2019-04-05T17:00:00-04:00 Chemistry Dow Lab LSA Biophysics Workshop / Seminar James Fraser
Seminar Titile: 'Structural Biology in situ: The Promise and Challenges of Cryo-Electron Tomography‘ (April 12, 2019 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/62526 62526-15397102@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 12, 2019 4:00pm
Location: Chemistry Dow Lab
Organized By: LSA Biophysics

Oncley Lecture Series

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 25 Mar 2019 09:29:31 -0400 2019-04-12T16:00:00-04:00 2019-04-12T17:30:00-04:00 Chemistry Dow Lab LSA Biophysics Workshop / Seminar Chemistry Dow Lab
Seminar Title: TBA (April 15, 2019 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/62527 62527-15397104@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 15, 2019 4:00pm
Location: Rackham Graduate School (Horace H.)
Organized By: LSA Biophysics

Krimm Lecture Series

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 25 Mar 2019 09:28:50 -0400 2019-04-15T16:00:00-04:00 2019-04-15T17:00:00-04:00 Rackham Graduate School (Horace H.) LSA Biophysics Workshop / Seminar Rackham Graduate School (Horace H.)
TBA (April 19, 2019 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/62971 62971-15526387@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 19, 2019 4:00pm
Location: Chemistry Dow Lab
Organized By: LSA Biophysics

Conventional macromolecular crystallographic refinement relies on stereochemistry restraints and a rudimentary energy functional to ensure the correct geometry of the model of the macromolecule, along with any bound ligand(s), within the experimental, X-ray density. Traditionally, these highly approximate methods lack explicit, rigorous terms for electrostatics, polarization, dispersion, hydrogen bonds, and other interactions, and they often rely on pre-determined parameters to capture the a priori understanding of the structure. In order to address this deficiency and capture a more complete understanding of the structure, we have developed a fully automated approach for macromolecular refinement based on a two layer, QM/MM (ONIOM) scheme implemented within our DivCon Suite which has been "plugged in" to two mainstream crystallographic packages: PHENIX[1] and BUSTER. This implementation consists of one or more "region layer(s)" characterized using linear-scaling, semi-empirical quantum mechanics, coupled with a "system layer" encompassing the rest of the protein described with a molecular mechanics functional[2].
Armed with a more accurate tool, we not only gain a better understanding of overall protein:ligand structure, but we can also use X-ray data to correctly determine active site tautomer/protomer states[3] and water site locations.
In this talk, we will discuss these methods and explore their impact in the context of binding affinity prediction and structure-based drug discovery.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 09 Apr 2019 08:51:59 -0400 2019-04-19T16:00:00-04:00 2019-04-19T17:00:00-04:00 Chemistry Dow Lab LSA Biophysics Workshop / Seminar Chemistry Dow Lab
Biophysics Symposium (April 24, 2019 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/62917 62917-15494569@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, April 24, 2019 8:00am
Location: Chemistry Dow Lab
Organized By: LSA Biophysics

Protein-protein interactions among Bcl-2 family proteins regulate apoptosis. Anti-apoptotic members of the family, including Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, Bcl-w, Mcl-1, and Bfl-1, sequester pro-apoptotic family members by binding tightly to an amphipathic alpha helix within them, blocking pro-death functions. Through this mechanism, overexpression of the anti-apoptotic proteins is implicated in oncogenesis and resistance to chemotherapy. Tight-binding and selective inhibitors of Bcl-2 family proteins can be used to diagnose the Bcl-2 dependencies of cancer cells and may be developed as therapeutics. The challenge of designing peptides that function as high-affinity and selective inhibitors of specific Bcl-2 family proteins poses a fundamental, challenging problem in protein engineering and a good opportunity to study principles of protein-peptide recognition. I will describe features of Bcl-2 family protein interactions and discuss approaches we have developed that integrate computational structure-based modeling with high-throughput screening to generate peptide-based inhibitors.

Register here: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/biophysics-symposium/2019-biophysics-symposium-registration/

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Conference / Symposium Wed, 10 Apr 2019 12:42:37 -0400 2019-04-24T08:00:00-04:00 2019-04-24T17:00:00-04:00 Chemistry Dow Lab LSA Biophysics Conference / Symposium Chemistry Dow Lab
Biophysics Talk Title: Who Said To Do That? Understanding Multicellular Decision Making (August 8, 2019 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/64265 64265-16274469@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, August 8, 2019 11:30am
Location: Chemistry Dow Lab
Organized By: LSA Biophysics

Abstract: One of the key outstanding challenges in understanding multicellular systems is identifying what single cells tune within themselves to change population-wide behaviors. A major driver of multicellular patterns is oscillations in single-cell signaling networks, but it is unknown what features single cells naturally modulate in these oscillations to change global patterns. An ideal system for addressing this challenge exists in the social amoeba, Dictyostelium discoideum. Dictyostelium uses travelling waves of cyclic AMP as a chemoattractant between cells to drive aggregation into a multicellular state when starving. These waves originate within single cells that release cyclic AMP to the environment, and the single-cell signaling network phenomena that drive the creation of these waves are well-characterized. Using new experimental data in conjunction with an existing phenomenological model, I explore what parameters single cells can modulate to control the properties of these signaling oscillations and the patterns they coordinate.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 22 Jul 2019 14:33:39 -0400 2019-08-08T11:30:00-04:00 2019-08-08T12:30:00-04:00 Chemistry Dow Lab LSA Biophysics Workshop / Seminar Chemistry Dow Lab