Membrane Protein Conference

This Membrane Protein Conference is open to all researchers interested in membrane proteins, including students with an interest in entering this growing field and researchers developing new technologies for membrane protein analysis. We welcome scientists from around the world to present and discuss the latest developments in membrane structural biology, lipid biophysics, trafficking and cellular functions of membrane zones, as well as technologies for preparing physiologically representative targets, screening tools and a variety of systems to stabilize and solubilize native membrane assemblies.

Schedule

An industry club meeting for those interested in developing new polymers and assays for nanodisc systems takes place before the conference. 

We'll begin with Introductions, questions, tips & tricks, where participants are free to introduce themselves briefly, ask questions or offer advice on methods, share news and job postings.

A series of about 9 short talks (15 minutes each) are followed by Q&A (5 minutes) with breaks for discussions.

Participants are invited to vote for the best talk by a junior scientist thanks to support from Nanosene. We'll also decide the next conference date.

Program:

2:00 pm CET Tips & Tricks. Introduce yourself and ask a question. Zoom link will be sent to registrants, who also receive videos recordings of the talks.

Session 1 Chair: Naomi Pollock, Lecturer, School of Biosciences, Aston U

2:05 pm CET Troy Kervin, PhD Student with Peijun Zhang, U Oxford will present Factory Reset: How to Uninstall Lipid Raft Bloatware and Migrate to the Proteolipid Code. Recent papers include Sheaf-theoretic representation of the proteolipid code, Lessons from pseudoscience in biology, No phases? No phase separation, A unifying membrane model and Lipid antagonists regulate protein clustering.

2:25 pm CET Xiaolong Liu, Postdoctoral Researcher with Ben Berks, U Oxford, on a new paradigm for outer membrane protein biogenesis in the Bacteroidota as published in Nature.

2:45 pm CET break

Session 2 Chair: Igor Tascón, Ikerbasque Research Fellow and Group Leader of Membrane Transport Mechanisms lab, BIOFISIKA Institute

2:50 pm CET Sara García-­Linares, Professor, Complutense, University of Madrid, on elucidating the structure and assembly mechanism of actinoporin pores in complex membrane environments as published in Sci Adv.

3:10 pm CET Radu Aricescu, Professor, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge, who recently published GABAA receptor gating imaged on the millisecond timescale on bioRxiv.

3:30 pm CET Antreas Kalli, Associate Professor, Discovery and Translational Science Department, University of Leeds, who recently published on regulation of PIEZO1 channel force sensitivity by interblade handshaking in Sci Adv.

3:50 pm CET break

Session 3 Chair: Evelyn Okorafor, PhD student and Graduate Research Assistant, Chemistry and Biochemistry Dept, Miami University |

3:55 pm CET Ana Fernandez-Marino, Assistant Professor, UCD Anschutz Medical Campus and Xiaofeng Tan, Postdoctoral Fellow with Jiansen Jiang, NIH, on the structural basis of fast N-type inactivation in Kv channels, as published in Nature.

4:15 pm CET Dawid Zyla, Postdoctoral Researcher with Erica Saphire, La Jolla Institute for Immunology, who recently published Stabilized Full-Length Measles Fusion Protein Elicits Potent Immunity and Protection In Vivo on bioRxiv.

4:35 pm CET Mackenzie Thompson, Postdoctoral Researcher, Dept of Molecular & Cell Biology, UC Berkeley, who recently published Asynchronous subunit transitions prime acetylcholine receptor activation in Science.

4:55 Closing discussions

Organizers

• Alice Rothnie, Senior Lecturer, School of Biosciences Biosciences Research Group, College of Health and Life Sciences, Aston University
• Barry Bruce, Charles P. Postelle Distinguished Professor, Dept. Microbiology; Dept. Biomolecular and Chemical Eng., University of Knoxville, Tennessee
• Bert Klumperman, South African Research Chair in Advanced Macromolecular Architectures at the Department of Chemistry and Polymer Science at Stellenbosch University
• Frank Sobott, ,Chair in Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry, Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, University of Leeds
• Michael Overduin, Professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Alberta, Canada
  Tim Dafforn, Professor, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham
• Naomi Pollock, Lecturer in Biosciences, School of Biosciences, College of Health and Life Sciences, Aston University
  
• Stephen Muench, Lecturer in Membrane Biology, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Leeds
• Tomas Laursen, Assistant Professor, Section for Plant Biochemsitry, University of Copenhagen
• Youzhong Guo, Professor, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Virginia Commonwealth University

Supporting Partners

ACS Publications

Anatrace

Aurorium

Creative Biolabs

Cube Biotech

DIMA Biotech

FB Reagents

Fluidic Sciences

Malvern Panalytical

Molscreen

Nanosene

RANE Pharmaceutical

Contact us

Let us know if you would like to get involved, we welcome any organizations that would like to contribute at any level. Sponsors and partners have complimentary passes, as well as a range of benefits.