Date/Time
Date(s) - 08/03/2017
11.00 - 13.30
Location
Sala Segimon Serrallonga
Category(ies)
Within the framework of the #BiophysicsWeek – the annual international effort to raise awareness of the field of biophysics – the UST seminar of the 8th of March will host a mini-symposium illustrating the basic concepts of this discipline and celebrate its accomplishments .
The symposium is part of the #BiophysicsWeek affiliate events
Prof. Pau Gorostiza (IBEC-ICREA) and Dr. Carlo Manzo (UVic-UCC) will introduce the concept of biophysics for a general audience through an overview of biophysical studies, from early experiments to recent applications. The lectures will be particularly focused on the role played by the light in the development of biophysics, including the latest achievements in biophotonics, optogenetics and photopharmacology.
BIOPHYSICS SEES THE LIGHT OF THE DAY
Carlo Manzo (UVic-UCC)
Born in the 19th century with the objective of demonstrating that biological function can be explained using the same laws that were applied to physical and chemical phenomena, biophysics has grown into a discipline of wide breadth that is sometime challenging to exhaustively define. Certainly, the biophysical research has been largely benefited by the invention and the technical development of optical microscopy, which has allowed the visualization of biological processes at an increasing level of definition, highlighting higher details of the cellular machinery. In this talk, I will describe the milestones of biophysical research driven by advances in microscopy, from early studies to the latest achievement obtained through the development of biophotonics and super-resolution nanoscopy.
CONTROL OF BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITY WITH LIGHT
Pau Gorostiza (ICREA & IBEC)
The large number of photoswitchable biomolecules discovered and developed in recent years covers a great variety of cellular functions like catalysis of metabolic processes, cytoskeletal polymerization and motors, nucleic acids dynamics, intracellular signaling and perhaps most dazzlingly membrane excitability, which has been at the focus of optogenetics and photopharmacology. The dream of precisely and remotely photocontrolling every aspect of the cell’s inner workings in intact tissue appears within reach and offers the promise of interrogating complex cellular processes to discover their molecular mechanisms. In this talk I will review recent and ongoing projects in the lab focused on light-regulated ligands, including the development of peptide inhibitors of protein-protein interactions, allosteric modulators of G protein-coupled receptors and photoswitchable tethered ligands of ionotropic receptors.