Yesterday (Monday) was a great day at the conference. There were so many things to attend so one could not manage to go to all. I here highlight the three most amazing events I attended yesterday, but there were more which I will try to look up online later.
First, but last in the day, the BPS Lecture! Wow. Frances Arnold was just amazing. She is such a great speaker – thoughtful, funny, inspiring, and with an amazing scientific story to tell. For me, and for many around me I overheard, this was the best BPS lecture ever! She talked about her research on directed evolution and how this led her to make new enzymes that can help (and many already do!) save the world. She also mentioned her presence on the TV show Big Bang Theory (playing herself) and the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm (yes, in that order). I was there when she got her prize as the fifth woman* ever to win the Chemistry Nobel Prize. It was huge! Last night, she left us with some wise words that she delivered to the top government recently:
Hope over fear
Unity over division
Science over fiction
Truth over lies
Let’s live by them. I hope the government will. Thank you, Frances! You are a true role model for all of us.
Second, I attended the Biophysics 101 session that was on LLPS. LLPS means liquid-liquid phase separation, but I am sure you know that already as this topic has revolutionized biology, biochemistry and biophysics in recent years. In fact, lots of talks at this meeting focus on LLPS and membrane-less condensates in various ways. And it makes sense - a lot of biological processes are now found to occur in, and are regulated by, condensates and phase separation. It’s a textbook changing discovery. The session gave a great introduction to the physical principles behind this phenomenon as well as a description of biological systems where this is important. I liked the way Rohit Pappu explained how this is not simply old polymer chemistry but more complex when it comes to the biological setting: there is phase separation coupled to percolation (i.e., networking interactions between multivalent macromolecules).
Third, I want to mention the new BPS program introduced this year of one-to-one mentoring. I signed up as a mentor before the meeting, and yesterday I had a chat over coffee with my assigned mentee. I did not know him before and vice versa, but we had a wonderful time and discussed moving on in academia: how to select a postdoc lab and then becoming an independent group leader. Although I am not an expert, we can help each other by sharing our own experiences and observations. There is much informal stuff to consider on top of the formal rules in academia. I hope my mentee get a great postdoc position, as he seemed to be an excellent candidate for many labs. To readers here, I would recommend you who are students to sign up for this next year as mentees, and to you who are faculty sign up to act as mentors. It is just a pleasure to speak to young energetic students. Great concept BPS! Make it a regular.
*Female Chemistry Nobel Prize winners to date: Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Irène Joliot-Curie (1935), Dorothy Hodgkin (1964), Ada Yonath (2009), Frances Arnold (2018), Emmanuelle Charpentier (2020), and Jennifer Doudna (2020).