MOSBRI full colour logo MOSBRI Newsletter 3 – April 2022

MOSBRI course on fluorescence microscopy for amyloid fibril imaging

Linköping University, Sweden from 23rd – 25th May 2022– Registration open!

This course focuses on hyperspectral fluorescence imaging performed on tissue sections, fixed cells as well as isolated or in vitro generated amyloid fibrils, stained with amyloid specific fluorescence ligands. The course will contain theoretical lectures, instrument demonstrations, practical exercises and is aimed at trainees from academia and industry with little experience in the domain or wanting to acquire new scientific and technical skills: graduate and PhD students, post-doctoral fellows, early career scientists, technicians, core facility staff.

The participants are encouraged to bring their own samples (which can either be prepared in their home lab or on site within the framework of the course) and fluorescent ligands. Staining with ligands available in Linköping can be performed during the course. Registration is open and the deadline for applying is 19th April 2022.

Find more information about this course and how to apply at:

https://www.mosbri.eu/training/end-user-short-courses/esc2/

1st MOSBRI scientific conference at Institut Pasteur: New dates & registration open!

The first MOSBRI conference will take place at the Conference Centre of Institut Pasteur (Paris, France).

New dates: The conference will start at 14:00 on the 20th of June, ending at 12:30 on the 22nd of June 2022.

This postponed in-person conference follows on from the successful ARBRE-MOBIEU meetings (Porto 2017, Warsaw 2018, Zagreb 2019, Prague 2020), and will include talks by:

  • representatives from all 15 centres of the MOSBRI European Research Infrastructure
  • 4 scientists who have already benefitted from the MOSBRI Trans-National Access scheme, allowing them to carry out TNA visits to Groningen, Hamburg, Marseille and Rome
  • two members of the MOSBRI Scientific Advisory Board (Chris Genick from Novartis in Basel, and Rob Gilbert from the University of Oxford)
  • Representatives from several innovative instrumentation companies

The full list of confirmed speakers is available at https://www.mosbri.eu/events/conferences/paris-2022/speakers/, and the detailed schedule will be communicated soon.

New – Two poster sessions will allow delegates to present their research and to network with MOSBRI partners.

Visit the conference website for more details and to register and submit your poster abstract before the 20th of May.:

https://www.mosbri.eu/events/conferences/paris-2022/.

Note: The registration process comprises a first step requiring the creation of an account, followed by the actual registration.

Please note that:

1) A significantly reduced registration fee (150€ instead of 240€) is offered, upon proof of status, to students and for post-doctoral fellows up to 2 years after their PhD thesis defence.

2) A small number of bursaries are still available for graduate and PhD students, and for post-doctoral fellows. These will cover the registration fee + 2 nights of accommodation in a hotel within walking distance of Institut Pasteur. Apply before the 22nd April 2022 with a short CV (2 pages maximum) and motivation letter, which should be sent to mosbri2022@pasteur.fr

MOSBRI TNA visit to MoB-IBT

Sandra Pérez Domínguez from the Institute of Biophysics, University of Bremen in Germany visited the MOSBRI partner MoB-IBT facility in Vestec (Czech Republic). Sandra spent 2 weeks at the Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in March 2022 studying the mechanical properties of fibroblasts using optical tweezers combined with confocal microscopy. With the support of the group of Zdenek Lansky, experts in the optical tweezers technique, Sandra measured rupture forces between suspended cells and silica beads. These experiments were performed using the Lumicks C-Trap correlative optical tweezer – confocal microscope, one of the key instruments of the MoB-IBT site.

Sandra Pérez Domínguez, PhD Marie Curie fellow at the University of Bremen.

MOSBRI was present during the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting 2022

Presentation of the MOSBRI project during the poster session of BPS2022 in San Francisco. Wouter Roos, researcher at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and partner of MOSBRI.

The MOSBRI project was presented at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting (BPS) 2022 in San Francisco, USA (19th to 23rd February). With nearly 5000 attendees, this event brought together leading scientists from all over the world who work at the interface of the life, physical, and computational sciences.

MOSBRI was represented by Wouter Roos from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, who displayed a poster of the project and chaired one of the method-oriented workshops on High-Speed AFM, focused on helping the participants gain working knowledge of new technologies. Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede, a member of the MOSBRI scientific advisory board, was also present as part of the council of the International Biophysical Society.

The BPS2022 is the first event where MOSBRI was presented overseas, and a good opportunity to disseminate the project’s aims and activities among a wide group of scientists worldwide.

In other news…

  • The first MOSBRI basic-level school (BLS1) “Quality control of protein samples”, will be held from the 4th to 8th of April 2022, at Institut Pasteur, Paris, France (Pasteur-PFBMI). This basic-level training course is aimed at biologists, immunologists, pharmacologists, biochemists, structural biologists, etc., from academia and industry who want to improve their skills in quality control of protein samples, and more specifically on the analysis and optimization of their samples for a variety of downstream applications. 17 successful applicants from 11 EU countries and Israel will attend this course. Students will not only receive theoretical and hands on training but will also have the occasion to network on site with colleagues with different career backgrounds.
  • MOSBRI will have a booth at the 8th NovAliX conference: “Biophysics in drug discovery” (9th to 11th May 2022), in Munich (Germany). This event will bring together medicinal chemistry, structural biology, pharmacology and biophysics communities from academia and industry, aiming to explore synergies enabling to accelerate the development of drug candidates.
    MOSBRI will also have a stand in the Instruct Biennial structural biology conference (18th to 20th May 2022) in Utrecht, The Netherlands. This conference will explore developments in structural biology and includes a focus on emerging methods and technologies that are helping scientists to decipher the behaviour complex biomolecular systems. These events will be a good opportunity to disseminate information about MOSBRI activities as well as establish and strengthen collaborations with colleagues from different scientific fields in academia and industry.
  • The MOSBRI end-user short course, ESC3 Quality control for integral membrane proteins, will take place on the 12th to 14th September at EMBL-SPC, Hamburg, Germany. Further details and registration will be available on the website soon.

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