Channel Structure, Function, Disease and Drugs

The Gordon Research Seminar on Ion Channels is a unique forum for graduate students, post-docs, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience and education to present and exchange new data and cutting edge ideas.

The 2014 Ion Channels GRS will bring together post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduates from diverse backgrounds to present recent data and discuss the quantitative analysis of ion channels and ion transporters. Scientific sessions will focus on classical and emerging concepts related to structure, function, regulation, and dynamics of diverse channel types, with an eye on how these complex molecular characteristics integrate to generate cellular excitability and control cellular and organ physiology. Special attention will be given to the use of emerging analytical tools and the next generation of ion channel drugs. In addition to presenting, discussing their data, and sharing research experiences with their peers "in the trenches", young researchers will have the opportunity to discuss the next leap in their career with mentors in the field - whether that’s choosing a postdoc, becoming an independent investigator, or transitioning to industry and other fields.

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Fundamental Characteristics and Approaches to Understand the Biological Functions of IDPs

The Gordon Research Seminar on Intrinsically Disordered Proteins is a unique forum for graduate students, post-docs, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience and education to present and exchange new data and cutting edge ideas.

The focus of this meeting is to introduce the topic of IDPs to those just entering the field while motivating interest in key areas of IDP research. Topics covered will include: (i) what characteristics define an IDP, (ii) what experimental and computational tools can be used to study IDPs, and (iii) what roles IDPs play in vivo. The GRS will also include a career development session featuring a panel of scientists at different points in their career path who will offer career advice and answer questions on the academic job search from a variety of perspectives.

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• Soft Matter
• Magnetism
• Nanostructures and Interfaces
• Biological Systems and Medicine
• Microscopy and Tomography
• Materials
• Structure and Dynamics
• Methods and Instrumentation
• Chemical Prozesses and Phase Transitions
• Matter under Extreme Conditions
• Particles and Nuclei

The main language of the conference is German, but English contributions are admitted.

With the 61st Benzon Symposium: `Structural Biology on the Move' we wish to highlight a collection of the most intriguing analytical challenges in the light of selected splendid achievements within structural biology. Notably, we will cover magnitudes of length-scales, from high-resolution analysis to whole-cell imaging, promoting current important development within hybrid structural analysis, where methods across boundaries between established and emerging disciplines are applied. With the 61st Benzon Symposium, we aim to envision the grand opportunities that are to come in structural biology.

The Symposium is a full four day scientific meeting. The format will be a combination of state-of-the-art lectures by invited speakers, by selected oral-poster presentations, and poster presentations.

Sessions:

• Impact of Large-scale Facilities on Biological Sciences
• Structural Studies of Functional Complexes
• Structure and Function of/in Biological Membranes
• Biomedical Applications
• Imaging: from Molecule to Cell
• Protein Dynamics and Kinetics

Deadlines:

• Abstracts round opens: March 15, 2015
• Abstract round closes: May 1, 2015
• Registration: (provided acceptance of abstract) June 1, 2015
• Fee: DKK 4,500 (covers registration fee, hotel accommodation, food, and social events)

At the interface of Structural, Chemical, Computational and Cell Biology

6th Symposium of the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology.

We are pleased to announce Cold Spring Harbor Asia Symposium on Structure Biology which will be held at the Suzhou Dushu Lake Conference Center in Suzhou, China, located approximately 60 miles west of Shanghai. The conference will begin at 7:00pm on the evening of Monday June 9, and will conclude after lunch on June 13, 2014.

The conference will include eight oral sessions and one poster session covering the latest findings across many topics in Structural Biology. Many talks will be selected from the openly submitted abstracts on the basis of scientific merit and relevance. Social events throughout the conference provide ample opportunity for informal interactions.

• Novel Imaging Techniques
• Emerging methods
• Dynamic ensembles and biological function
• Frontiers in Structural Biology (1) - Macromolecular machinery
• Frontiers in Structural Biology (2) - membrane proteins
• Frontiers in Structural Biology (3) - Pathogens and Viruses
• Frontiers in Structural Biology (4) - Signaling complexes

Ubiquitin (Ub) and Ub-like modifiers (Ubls) are small proteins that upon covalent attachment regulate protein functions. Because of the general role of Ub/Ubls in basically every cellular pathway and their key functions in disease onset, our goal is to strengthen bonds with other research fields. Therefore, we bring leading scientists from different research fields together and introduce them to the fascinating and versatile world of Ub/Ubls to identify novel research directions.

The format of the conference will be a combination of lectures by invited speakers [including Thomas Steitz, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009)], selected oral-poster presentations and poster presentations.

Topics will cover Ub and Ubl Enzymology and their relations to:

• Chromatin & transcription regulation
• RNA & Protein Quality Control
• Nuclear envelope & transport
• Signalling & DNA repair
• Disease & Therapeutics Â

Attendance will be limited to a total of 200 participants (excluding speakers) and poster presentations will be limited to 100.

 An ancient tradition links the study of crystallography to this city, which during the sixteenth century saw the Medici family attracting on the banks of the Arno river Nicolas Steno, who stated the first law of crystallography. In the same period the Medici started to collect some crystalline specimens, first nucleus of one of the most precious and ancient collections of natural crystals.

The program selected by the Scientific and Organizing committees is thought to support the participation and contacts between members of the two groups involved, enabling the exchange of ideas in scientific fields (such as crystal growth, methods and techniques for structure determination, molecular recognition, polymer and material science, molecular medicine and structural biology), different and sometimes seemingly distant, but all associated with crystallography.

Thus, a hundred years after the international awards for the fundamental importance of studing matter by means of crystals, we are confident that Florence, the cradle of Renaissance ideas, will be the venue in which scientists from different fields will innovate and find stimuli for growth and collaboration.

This HERCULES Specialized Course will address non-crystallographic X-ray and neutron scattering techniques for structural biology and soft matter with a focus on small angle scattering, reflectometry and fibre diffraction. An introduction to the theory as well as recent state-of-the-art examples from a multitude of systems (proteins, polymers, membranes, fibres, colloids etc.) will be presented as well as recent developments in sample environment and data analysis. Furthermore, two practical days on two ILL instruments (D17 and D33) and two ESRF beamlines (BM02 and BM29) will be proposed. The course is aimed at PhD students, postdocs and scientists in the field of physics, chemistry and biology who want to learn more on the theoretical background, practical aspects and applications of these techniques.

Programme

The 2014 International Biophysics Congress main themes are

Theme 1: Protein Structure

Theme 2: Membranes and Membrane Proteins

Theme 3: Cell and Muscle Biophysics

Theme 4: Ion Channels and Electrophysiology

Theme 5: Imaging

Theme 6: Bioenergetics

Theme 7: Single Molecule

Theme 8: Systems Biophysics

in addition there are several satellite meetings Bicontinuous Cubic Phases Conference (30 July-2 August 2014) and Molecular Modelling (MM2014) (31 July-2 August 2014).

Molecular Modelling 2014: From biomolecules to materials is the next conference of the Association of Molecular Modellers of Australasia (AMMA). The conference will be held in the Gold Coast hinterland in South-East Queensland in the lush rainforest of Lamington National Park, at the O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat.

The themes of the conference will include molecular dynamics and quantum chemistry simulations of materials, methodological developments in hierarchical modelling, computer-aided drug design and cheminformatics.

The meeting will organised similarly to a Gordon Conference with presentations in the morning, late afternoon and evening but time in the middle of the day to interact with other delegates and enjoy the unique location.

The main conference will be on 31 Julyâ€"2 August 2014. The conference will be preceded by a forum for PhD students and Early-Career Researchers (ECRs) on 30 July and 31 July 2014.

This is a satellite conference to, and precedes, the IUPAB International Biophysics Congress, Brisbane, 3-7 August 2014. The conference is particularly accessible to students and early career researchers as the presentation format is a series of workshop and tutorial-style sessions.

The main conference organising institutes are CSIRO and Imperial College London, UK.

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The main objective of the "Soft-Inter2014" school is to present a state of the art on self-assemblies and of their related concepts together with their characterization in the three disciplines, i.e. physics, chemistry and biology, in order to generate debates and communications in between scientific communities. An extremely didactic approach will be requested to the speakers, all of them being scientists involved in cross-disciplinary research of very high level. In addition, each two-hours course will be coupled to a brainstorming workshop hosted by the lecturer and a moderator of another discipline that will help in stimulating discussion. These discussions will compare the different views on the weak interactions, and help to identify purely semantic discrepancies on this adisciplinary concept.

The fourth Australasian Course in Macromolecular Crystallisation will be held in Parkville, Victoria (Melbourne) between the 9th and 13th of December, 2013. Â This course is an intensive, hands-on practical course that combines lectures on all aspects of macromolecular crystallisation, from sample preparation to cryo-protection and harvesting of crystals. One day will be spent at the MX and SAX beamlines of the Australian Synchrotron.Â