LEAPS Meets Life Sciences Conference

Session

Unmet Medical Needs

17 May 2023, 08:45

Hotel Hermitage, La Biodola Bay, Elba Island, Italy

217. Keynote 5: Structure-guided approaches to malaria vaccines

Matt Higgins

17/05/2023, 08:45

Oral

Malaria is one of the most deadly diseases to affect humanity and it is caused by a parasite which has co-evolved with humans for millennia. It has proved hugely challenging to develop a vaccine to target this adaptable and changeable parasite. I will talk about how we use structural approaches to design improved vaccine immunogens, showing how we combine structural biology methods to...

267. Ambient-temperature serial femtosecond crystallography studies of bacterial ribosome antibiotic complexes

Hasan Demirci (Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey)

17/05/2023, 09:30

Oral

High-resolution ribosome structures determined by cryo X-ray crystallography have provided important insights into the mechanism of translation. Such studies have thus far relied on large ribosome crystals kept at cryogenic temperatures to reduce radiation damage. We use serial femtosecond X-ray crystallography (SFX) with an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) to obtain diffraction data from...

254. Large scale imaging of neuronal networks of the brain

Adrian Wanner

17/05/2023, 10:00

Oral

Imaging the structure of neuronal networks is of fundamental importance for the understanding of information processing in the healthy and diseased brain. But neuronal networks in the brain span several millimeters in each dimension and the smallest neurites and synaptic connections are on the order of a few tens of nanometers in size. To date, only volume electron microscopy (vEM) provides...

226. Molecular mechanisms of tau filament formation

Sofia Lovestam

17/05/2023, 11:00

Oral

Neurodegenerative diseases are characterised by the accumulation of amyloids in human brain. Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) of amyloid filaments from post mortem brains has recently shown that distinct amyloid conformations define different neurodegenerative diseases. We describe the structural characterisation of in vitro model systems for amyloid formation that aim to replicate the same...

256. Integrative structural biology applied to virus infection

Winfried Weissenhorn (University Grenoble Alpes)

17/05/2023, 11:30

Oral

The IBS hosts a number of state of the art structural biology platforms that are accessible via the national FRISBI and the European Instruct programs providing technician-supported user access to instrumentation including cell imaging, cryo electron microscopy and NMR. Furthermore, the IBS participates in the operation of the ESRF CM01 electron microscopy facility equipped with a Titan Krios...

272. Pandemic responses and the impact of infrastructure and technology on structural studies

Dave Stuart (Dave Stuart Strubi, Department of Medicine, University of Oxford and Diamond Light Source, U.K.)

17/05/2023, 12:00

Oral

Structural biology had a major impact on the delivery of effective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. I will give some illustrations of these from our experiences, however I will attempt to embed them in a consideration of the broader developments.
Large infrastructures allowed the high resolution structural analysis of virus proteins and particles via X-ray crystallography. For small...