One-day Workshop on Biophysical Methods for Studying Protein (Mis-/Un-)Folding & Dynamics

Do you want to investigate protein folding, unfolding or misfolding pathways, but don't know which biophysical methods to choose or combine? Look no further!

This One-Day Workshop, co-organized by the FWO Research Community PROFOUND, the Belgian Biophysical Society, and Flanders Bioimaging will provide you with a great introductory overview!

We have an impressive international line-up of speakers. They are passionate to talk about their latest structural biology research on chaperones, membrane proteins and other protein systems. They will dig deep into technologies such as NMR, single-molecule FRET, cryo-EM, HDEX-MS, optical tweezers and other advanced methodological pipelines that are used to study protein real-time and/or atomistic structure and dynamics. But there's more: we will introduce you to multimodal and integrative methods, and explain their synergies, pros and cons.

This workshop is held on September 10 at the KU Leuven Rega Institute and precedes the Leuven Protein Aggregation meeting that takes place September 11-13 at KULeuven-VIB.

Join us for an exciting day and learn the ins and outs of different techniques and approaches to empower your future structural biology research on Protein Un/Mis/Folding!

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Programme

9:00-9:30 Registration & Coffee

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9:30-9:40 Welcome and Introduction of the FWO Scientific Research Community "PROFOUND" by Prof. Jelle Hendrix

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9:40-10:20 Enhancing Research Data Reproducibility Through Protein Quality Control

Prof. André Matagne

Laboratory of Enzymology and Protein Folding, Centre for Protein Engineering, University of Liège, Belgium

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10:20-11:00 Time-resolved fluorescence methods to probe structure & dynamics in solutions and liquid condensates

Prof. Jelle Hendrix

Dynamic Bioimaging Lab, Advanced Optical Microscopy Centre, Biomedical Research Institute, Hasselt University, Belgium

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11:00-11:20 Coffee break

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11:20-12:00 Chaperoned-mediated protein dynamics studied with optical tweezers

Prof. Sander Tans

AMOLF, Amsterdam, Netherlands and Bionanoscience Department, Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

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12:00-12:40 Hydrogen-deuterium exchange coupled to mass spectrometry: A multifaceted tool to decipher the molecular mechanism of membrane proteins

Prof. Chloé Martens

Structure and Function of Biological Membranes, Center for Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

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12:40-1:20PM Graph-based approaches to study dynamic hydrogen-bond networks in proteins and protein complexes

Prof. Ana-Nicoleta Bondar

Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania and Forschungszentrum Jülich, Institute of Computational Biomedicine, Germany.

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1:20-2:30PM Sandwich Lunch & Posters

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2:30-3:00PM Mass Spectrometry and Structural Biology: 1 + 1 = 3

dr. Jürgen Claesen

Department of Epidemiology and Data Science, Amsterdam UMC, VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Data Science Institute, Hasselt University, Belgium.

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3:00-3:30PM The combination of smFRET and local HDX-MS to monitor the (non)folding of a model secretary client.

dr. Guillaume Roussel

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Laboratory of Molecular Bacteriology, KU Leuven Rega Institute, Belgium

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3:30-4:10PM Protein Translocation of the AAA+ Machine ClpB is Driven by an Allosteric Ratchet

dr. Remi Casier

Gilad Haran Lab, Department of Chemical and Biological Physics, Weizmann institute of Science, Israel

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4:10-5:00PM Integrating biophysical methods to define protein folding and misfolding mechanism

Prof. Sheena Radford

Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Leeds, United Kingdom

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5:00-6:30PM Reception and Posters

Practical information

Date: Tuesday, September 10, 2024 from 9:00AM-6:30PM

Location: Rega Institute KU Leuven (Herestraat 49, B3000 Leuven, Belgium).

Attendance: Registration is 50 euro, which includes coffee breaks and lunch. A no-show fee will be applied.

Organizing committee: Jochem Smit (Rega/KUL), dr. Sam Duwé (UHasselt), dr. Guillaume Roussel (Rega/KUL) and Prof. Jelle Hendrix (UHasselt)

The multidisciplinary FWO research network project PROFOUND (2021-2026) aims to solidify a platform for  biophysical/medical research on protein dynamics and folding in Flanders and Belgium.

Contact

KU Leuven Rega Institute

Location

Herestraat 49, B3000 Leuven

Function

Research Institute