I’m excited to be at the 2020 BPS Meeting, mostly because I’m looking forward to the exposure to new scientific ideas and findings. I find that conferences often leave me refreshed and excited about the current state of many scientific fields and attending BPS is one of the best ways to maximize exposure to new and different ideas. Full disclosure: I’m also glad to escape the Boston winter weather for a week in Southern California.
It’s Subgroup Saturday and today I set out to answer two of my most pressing questions since arriving at the San Diego Convention Center. Here’s what I found out:
1) What is at the top of that huge staircase in the center of the Convention Center (seen from Harbor Drive)? This staircase immediately caught my eye and the abundance of runners using it for exercise made it seem especially daunting. Armed with my morning coffee, I started climbing that set of stairs. An early morning exercise group was blasting workout music nearby, so I was feeling pumped for the whole experience. Halfway up, I realized there’s actually more stairs than you can see from the bottom – so consider yourself warned. I was out of breath at the top and slightly disappointed to find a simple corridor. However, at the end of the corridor, there’s a nice view of the harbor area. So if you’re up for a workout, I think it’s worth the trek. Or just take the escalator inside of the Convention Center for a comparable view.
2) What is the coolest new application of cryo-EM? As a self-admitted jumper onto the cryo-EM bandwagon, I was super excited for the cryo-EM subgroup this evening. I’m doing my post-doctoral work in single particle cryo-EM and still learning a lot of ins and outs of the method. But I’m in absolute awe every time I see a presentation that shows different protein conformations from a single sample that are resolved at near atomic resolution, although this is becoming more routine these days.
At the cryo-EM subgroup, I learned that the coolest new cryo-EM technique is not related to single particle EM but is in fact tomography!! Instead of imaging single particles of your favorite macromolecule frozen in aqueous solution, tomography involves imaging thin slices of material, like cells with your favorite macromolecule. One interesting example discussed was imaging different species of bacteria expressing chemoreceptors, which are multi-protein complexes that mediate chemotaxis. It was discovered that chemoreceptor arrangement is distinct in the various tested bacteria and also was dependent on the presence/absence of chemotaxis chemicals. For more information, check out Dr. Briegel’s work (https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/ariane-briegel#tab-2). I think one key benefit of these types of tomography studies involves manipulating cells (e.g., by adding chemotaxis chemicals) and then directly observing the structural effects on macromolecular ensembles.
Updates on more adventures and cool science to come.