NIGMS Feedback Loop Blog – National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Interested in new methods for improving the speed, cost and success of protein structure determination? Want to learn more about how to use structural and biophysical methods to functionally characterize macromolecules? Then consider attending our 10th annual Enabling Technologies in Structure and Function workshop from April 19-21, 2010, on the NIH campus in Bethesda, MD. There’s no registration fee.

As in years past, the 2010 workshop will cover all the practical issues concerning protein structure determination and biophysical methods. Presentations will focus on topics such as protein structure and function, hybrid methods, bioinformatics and homology modeling, and crystallization methods for soluble proteins and membrane proteins. In addition, we’re offering two hands-on workshops on methods for solving difficult crystallization problems and tools for mining the rich structure and function databases for biological macromolecules. There will also be a poster session.

We build the oral sessions from attendees’ submitted poster abstracts, so we will continue to finalize the agenda in the coming weeks.

The program is very student-friendly, and we welcome scientists involved in structural efforts abroad. Please feel free to forward this note to anyone who may like to attend.

Last week, the American Society for Cell Biology held its 49th annual meeting  in San Diego. There were thousands of attendees, including many of our funded investigators as well as a few of us from NIGMS. As a new program director, I enjoyed meeting many of the grantees and applicants I’ve talked to on the phone or by e-mail. I met a few others, too, who stopped by the NIGMS booth to get information on funding opportunities.

I can’t even begin to come up with an exhaustive list of all highlights from the 5-day program, so I will share just a few.

I was most excited about how discoveries made using “simple” organisms, such as yeast and unicellular algae, are informing models of human disease in new ways. For example, studies of centriole biogenesis and cilia formation in invertebrates have provided a mechanistic understanding of human ciliopathic disorders such as Bardet-Biedl syndrome. Interestingly, the relationship between human disorders and basic research is a two-way street: By doing a genetic analysis of plant and invertebrate orthologs of genes mutated in people with Bardet-Biedl syndrome, researchers have identified an evolutionarily conserved ciliogenesis “toolkit.”

In his keynote symposium talk, Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch presented another way to think about model systems. He discussed the potential of deriving induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from patients, causing the cells to differentiate into a certain type or organ system, and then using the differentiated cells to test for patient-specific drug interventions or gene therapy treatments. There are still scientific and technical challenges, such as recreating the progression of disease development and pathology in a culture dish, but I think that using iPS cells to model human disease may revolutionize our understanding of the cellular basis of disease and, in turn, help us learn more about how normal cells work.

The meeting also stressed the importance of science outreach. During a plenary lecture about the role of NIH in supporting basic research, especially in cell biology, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins also talked about the role of scientists in educating various groups on the intrinsic value and economic impact of scientific research. Dr. Lawrence S. B. Goldstein echoed this sentiment during his acceptance speech for the ASCB Public Service Award by describing how even small efforts, such as explaining the potential of stem cell research to your neighbor, can have a cumulative impact.

I left knowing that this is definitely an exciting time to be a cell biologist, and I’m already looking forward to the 2010 meeting in Philadelphia.