We are delighted to announce that the Biophysical Society Council has approved the formation of the Multiscale Genome Organization Subgroup! Essentially, that means we have a venue for getting together annually at the Biophysical Society meeting and spearheading other activities. Tom and I are delighted to co-lead this effort as it takes off, and we express our special gratitude to Lars Nordenskiöld (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) and Andrzej Stasiak (University of Lausanne) who started this initiative with us.
The formation of this new subgroup is entirely thanks to our community. At the March-April 2019 BPS Thematic Meeting on chromatin multiscale modeling held at the picturesque Ecole des Physiques in the French Alps at Les Houches, France, participants enthusiastically proposed and endorsed the formation of this group. I recall that afternoon— we awoke to a surprise spring snowstorm that left us buried in a few feet of wonderful white snow, made even more surprising by the balmy sunny spring weather of the prior day — as we made our way into the rustic dining room for breakfast, we arranged for an afternoon discussion session since all planned sports activities for the free afternoon were cancelled.
Perhaps we were influenced by Mont Blanc in the background, inspiring us to be broad and ambitious, but now our community is a reality. With the formation of this new subgroup, we aim to bring together biologists, chemists, physicists, and mathematicians to discuss and launch collaborations and advance the field of genome structure, dynamics, function, and applications through new conceptual approaches and perspectives. We are particularly excited about bringing together experimentalists and theoreticians/modelers and emphasizing the interplay between techniques and ideas.
We are interested in understanding better the complex multiscale features and properties of genomes, from bases to chromosome organization and interactions, and inspiring scientists to develop models and experimental strategies on many spatial and temporal scales to address all relevant components of the chromosome folding problem and the epigenomic regulation of gene expression. Such multiscale approaches, combining experimental data and modeling and informatics, are necessary to extract and identify structure/function relationships on various scales, from individual nucleic acids to whole genomes, and to pursue important applications in medicine and genomics. The Special Issue of Biophysical Journal published May 5, 2020 (Volume 118), describes our dazzling subject and the inventive methods already developed for and applied to its study.
As we continue with our efforts, we welcome your ideas and suggestions on how to move forward and advance our field. We hope to see you all soon, whether virtually or in person. In the meantime, be well.
Tamar Schlick [email protected]
Tom Connor Bishop [email protected]