C3d: 2008, May 21-23, Course on Biophysical Protein Characterization, Amsterdam, Netherlands (»Add to Infobox)

Sixma Titia

Titia Sixma's Group

The Course on Biophysical Protein Characterization was organized in collaboration with the EU project Spine2complexes.

Since protein-protein interactions play a crucial part in understanding the molecular mechanism of ubiquitin conjugation, a workshop was given to introduce members of the RUBICON NOE to a number of biophysical techniques that analyze these interactions in a quantitative manner. The course was organized by Alex Fish with contributions from Anastassis Perrakis and Titia Sixma. The course was open for participants from the EU networks RUBICON and Spine-2-Complexes. Since the course was oversubscribed significantly each lab could only send a single participant, although the lectures were open to a wider local audience. Each participant was asked to introduce his/her work in a 5-minute talk on the first day. Interestingly, several non-Rubicon participants were working on ubiquitin-related topics, which led to useful discussion. The course consisted of lectures and practicals on Isothermal calorimetry (ITC), Multi-angle-Laser Light Scattering (MALLS) and Plasmon resonance (SPR, using Biacore technology) as well as a discussion session on advantages and disadvantages of protein-related biophysical analysis in general and a shared data analysis practical in a computer laboratory. Course participants rotated through the practicals, with 5 people in each group. Each participant was asked to contribute samples for analysis by the various techniques. In practice 10 different samples were tested on MALLS, 7 on ITC for which 5 successful sets of data could be collected. On the Biacore 5 samples were tested and four of these gave useful data. The use of ‘real’ samples, that were meaningful to the participants, was logistically complicated, but in practice was very successful. The analysis gave interesting data to various participants, but it also meant that the tutorials face real-life problems and showed a real-life analysis. Overall the students were therefore highly satisfied and awarded the course with an ‘excellent’ evaluation.

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Sixma Titia (Principal Investigator / Titia Sixma's Group)

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