The CBBL, awarded in the new edition of the “marató de TV3″ projects

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Oct 282011
 

The CBBL team has been awarded in the new edition of the “Marató de TV3” basic research projects call. The awarded project deals with the study of the modulation of microglia/macrophage response by targeting novel immune receptors regulating cell activation and phenotype, which will provide neuroprotection after acute CNS damage.

The role of the CBBL within the consortium is to bring knowledge in the computational modelling of the receptors and their interations with different types of ligands. The project is coordinated by Laia Acarín (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), and includes the groups of Carme Solà (CSIC), Joan Sayós (Vall d’Hebron Institut de Recerca) and Hugo Peluffo (Institut Pasteur, Montevideo), as well as the CBBL.

The “marató de TV3″, organized by the Catalan public broadcasting media, has established since 20 years ago as a reference charity in Catalonia and the South of Europe and represents a sublimation of the expectations the general public puts into scientific research of important biomedical problems. Despite the economical difficulties our country is suffering in the last few years, the response of the public to the call for funding is increasing every year, demonstrating a very proactive and cohesive society.

As public researchers we take this new challenge with renovated energy, and taking into account the individual contributions of many anonymous people we will put all our efforts to produce a succesful outcome of the project.

The project will be awarded during the official ceremony that will take place at the UAB on Wednesday, November 9th 2011.

Update: news on the event at the UPF newsletter.

 Posted by at 9:29 am

F. Gervasio, CNIO – Understanding allosteric effects in receptor and non-receptor kinases

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Oct 282011
 

At 11AM PRBB 28th October 2011

Protein kinases (PK) are one of the largest and most functionally diverse protein families and are involved in
most cellular pathways. PK malfunction is related to an important number of human diseases, such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Thus, PK represent major targets for drug development.
Historically, drug discovery programs have been dominated by efforts to develop antagonists that compete for binding with endogenous ligands at orthosteric sites. However, allosteric drugs might offer several therapeutic advantages over traditional orthosteric ligands, including greater safety and/or selectivity.
Here, by combining of state-of-the-art computer simulations as well as spectroscopy, chemical and molecular biology approaches we study in great details complex allosteric effects in the pharmaceutically relevant Abl and FGFr kinases.
In Abl a shift of the SH2 domain from the C- to the N-terminus of the catalytic domain has been found to be involved in activation [1]. The allosteric mechanism, by which the SH2 domain induces conformational changes at the active site, is still debated. We have used elastic network models, normal mode analysis, molecular dynamics simulation and mutagenesis to gain insight into the interplay between the SH2 domain and the relevant motifs at the catalytic site. We propose a mechanism, by which the SH2 domain influences the dynamics of the crucial residues directly involved in the catalytic process. In FgFr we use free energy calculations, crystallography and NMR approaches to shed light on the mode of action of a novel allosteric inhibitor. [2]

[1] Nagar B, Hantschel O, Seeliger M, Davies JM, Weis WI, Superti-Furga G, Kuriyan J Molecular Cell 2006, 21, 787-798.
[2] F. Bono et al., submitted.

 Posted by at 9:06 am

Thermodynamics with Feedback: Extracting Work from Information

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Oct 172011
 

Date: 19th October 2011
Time: 12:00h
Place: Aula seminari de física fonamental (3.20)

Speaker: Jordan M. Horowitz (Departamento de Física Atómica, Molecular y Nuclear and GISC, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)

Title: Thermodynamics with Feedback: Extracting Work from Information

Abstract.-

The laws of thermodynamics restrict the maximum efficiency with which a thermodynamic engine can convert heat into useful work. However, this limit can be overcome with the use of feedback – that is by altering the operational protocol of the engine in response to information about its microscopic state. The reason being that the information acquired through feedback can itself be converted into work. In this talk, I will discuss recent results detailing how information enters into the thermodynamics of a system driven away from equilibrium by feedback, such as a thermodynamic engine. In particular, I will prove and analyze the second law of thermodynamics with discrete feedback, which relates information to heat, work, and irreversibility. We will see that optimal feedback processes that convert all the information into work are feedback reversible – they are indistinguishable from their time reverse. Finally building on the intuition gained from examining the second law of feedback, I will introduce a method for designing optimal thermodynamic engines with feedback, which I will illustrate with an N-particle Szilard engine.

Sagawa, T. and Ueda, M., Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 080403 (2008)
Horowitz, J. M. and Vaikuntanathan, S., Phys. Rev. E 82, 061120 (2010)
Horowitz, J. M. and Parrondo, J. M. R., Eurphys. Lett. 95, 1005 (2011)

 Posted by at 9:26 am
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