MOSBRI Newsletter – December 2024
The MOSBRI programme has been granted an extension of 4 months
and will now end on the 31st October 2025.
The 3rd MOSBRI scientific conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia
The 3rd MOSBRI scientific conference, held at the Grand Union Hotel in Ljubljana, Slovenia, attracted over 200 participants and was organized by the National Institute of Chemistry. The event featured seven thematic sessions, including collaborations with ARBRE, Instruct-ERIC, and the Slovenian Biophysical Society. Presentations were made by MOSBRI consortium members, industry representatives, and international scientists, alongside 78 posters and 14 industrial sponsors showcasing advances in biophysical instrumentation. The conference facilitated international scientific exchange and highlighted developments in molecular-scale biophysics.
Prizes were awarded for outstanding presentations, and networking opportunities were enhanced through evening poster sessions and a conference dinner featuring Slovenian musician Boštjan Gombač. The conference emphasized the importance of an integrated approach in modern biophysics, addressing various life science research questions and encouraging participation from early career scientists. This event continued the legacy of previous conferences held in Paris and Zaragoza, focusing on interdisciplinary collaboration in structural biology, biochemistry, synthetic biology, and biophysics.
Save the dates!
The next MOSBRI conference will take place in Paris, 10th to 13th of June 2025
For more details, to register and submit an abstract, visit the website:
https://www.mosbri.eu/events/conferences/paris-2025/
Special Issue of the European Biophysics Journal dedicated to MOSBRI
The European Biophysics Journal editorial office will publish in the autumn of 2025 a Special Issue dedicated to MOSBRI ’s outcomes, which will be one of the important legacies of this 4-year research infrastructure project.
This issue will welcome:
- results originating from Trans-National Access visits
- work presented at MOSBRI conferences
- results of Joint Research Activities
- guidelines and SOPs resulting from consensus meetings and outcomes of benchmarking studies
- any other work involving MOSBRI team members or people having attended MOSBRI events (conferences, courses, …)
Submission instructions and guidelines for authors can be downloaded from the website:
https://www.mosbri.eu/news-and-output/ebj-mosbri-special-issue/
MOSBRI TNA: Unravelling the structure of bionanocages and related proteins at MOSBRI TNA site ULB and beyond
Protein nano-compartments are widely used in biology, being part of ubiquitous solutions that were devised early in evolution. Both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells use nanocages for, for example, allowing pH in ranges otherwise not compatible with life to control ferrous and ferric ions.
A group led by Profs. Alice Pereira and Pedro Tavares from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa in Portugal have experience in CD, EPR and Mössbauer spectroscopies for structural and functional studies, but needed more information about changes in secondary structure, especially in situations where UV absorption by the iron core makes precise determination of protein concentration difficult. Prof. Tavares used the MOSBRI TNA programme to gain knowledge about how FTIR spectroscopy could overcome these issues and made good use of access to the MOSBRI partner ULB in Brussels, who are experts in the use of FTIR for secondary structure determination. Furthermore, the project benefited from visits to other MOSBRI partners, with access to Pasteur for hydrodynamic characterization via Mass Photometry and AUC for exploring the concentration and divalent ions effect on oligomeric states, as well as access to AU-SRCD for expert access to CD spectroscopy, thus proving that multi-site access under the MOSBRI TNA programme is a valuable opportunity for biophysical research in Europe.
Figure: Different protein nanocages under study. Left: Mini-ferritin (Dps), a DNA-binding protein composed of 12 identical subunits forming a cube-like structure with rounded corners, measuring 8–9 nm in diameter. Middle: Mitochondrial ferritin (MtF), which assembles into a spherical shell of 24 subunits with an outer diameter of approximately 12 nm. Right: Encapsulin protein (EncA), composed of 60 identical protomers, forming a protein shell with an outer diameter of about 24 nm.
MOSBRI recommends access to ULB for your needs in instrumentation and expertise in FTIR spectroscopies on all bio-molecules.
MOSBRI courses 2024
ESC8: Basic and advanced protocols in biological calorimetry (BioCal).
The BioCal course took place at Institute BIFI in Zaragoza from the 8th to 10th July 2024. Ten participants from 8 countries (Austria, France, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Türkiye) attended this 3-day course at BIFI (Institute of Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems) of the University of Zaragoza. The main objective was to provide participants with the basics of biocalorimetry for assessing macromolecular stability and interactions, the basic and advanced protocols in biological calorimetry, along with important considerations for experimental design, data analysis and interpretation of results. The course material is available here
https://www.mosbri.eu/training/end-user-short-courses/esc8/
BLS2: Single molecule biophysics in cell lysates
This Basic Level School was held at the Institute of Biotechnology, Czech Academy of Sciences in Vestec in May 2024. The event welcomed 15 participants from 10 different countries and centred on hands-on training in TIRF-based single molecule imaging of cell lysates, along with basic image analysis of the obtained data. To illustrate the experimental system, we examined the interactions between microtubules and microtubule-associated proteins, including molecular motors. Esteemed experts in the field, Carsten Janke from Institut Curie and Tim Mitchison from Harvard Medical School, delivered presentations on their current research related to microtubules. The practical sessions included demonstrations of various microscopy techniques. Participants conducted single-molecule experiments using specially prepared samples of motor proteins and microtubule-associated proteins that had not been previously explored. Attendees had ample opportunity to master microscopy techniques, sample preparation methods, and the fundamentals of data analysis and interpretation.
Upcoming MOSBRI Courses
The advanced level school, ALS2, on Biophysical methods for the real-time characterization of molecular interactions will be held from the 31st of March to 4th of April 2025 in Paris.
Read more about this course and apply at: https://www.mosbri.eu/training/advanced-level-schools/als2/
The end user short course, ESC10, on Protein-membrane interactions will be held in Ljubljana in 2025. Check the MOSBRI website for details when they become available.
In other news…
Participation of MOSBRI in events
Maria Sunnerhagen participated as a speaker in the Protein Society meeting – PS38 held in Vancouver, Canada in from 23rd to 26th of July 2024 and the Baltic biophysics congress held in Kaunas, Lithuania from 3rd to 4th of October 2024. These events were an opportunity to reach PhD students and young researchers potentially interested in the opportunities offered by MOSBRI.
Francesca Cutruzzola and Patrick England organized a special session called MOSBRI: Molecular Biophysics to understand life and disease, during the FEBS 2024 congress held in Milano from 29th June to 3rd July 2024. The session highlighted success stories selected from the more than 150 TNA projects accepted to date from applicants worldwide and showcased some of the networking activities (international conferences, courses and training schools) and joint research activities that MOSBRI has spearheaded.
If you wish to receive our next Newsletters, go to https://www.mosbri.eu/news/ to subscribe.
The MOSBRI website will also provide you with more information about the network partners, services offered, training and many other activities of the MOSBRI programme.
This newsletter was published on Monday 9th of December 2024
