Aug
12
Mon
2013
Dr. Lee Hartwell Session @ Amriteshwari Hall
Aug 12 @ 8:15 pm – 9:15 pm
LeeHartwellLeland H. Hartwell Ph.D.
2001 Nobel Laureate, Physiology & Medicine

Dr. Lee Hartwell received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology / Medicine for his discovery of protein molecules that control the division of cells. He was the President and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington before moving to Arizona State University’s Center for Sustainable Health.

Dr. Hartwell is also adjunct faculty at Amrita University. He spoke to the delegates at Bioquest from his office in the US, over Amrita’s e-learning platform A-View. Given below are excerpts from his address.

I would like to address the young people in the audience. I know that many of you may have come to this meeting wondering, “How can I become a successful scientist? How can I prepare myself to make a contribution in this world?”

These questions are interesting to me also.

Believe it or not, I am still trying to be a successful scientist. That may surprise you since you probably think that a Nobel laureate must have found the answers. But the problem is that the answers to these questions change with time and the answers are different today than what they were when I began my career fifty years ago. The strategy of the 1960’s doesn’t work so well anymore. What is different now?

First, what we know now is much more. For example, by 1970, no genes from any organisms were sequenced. In 2013, we have the complete sequence of the human genome. Second, not only do we know much more today, accessing that knowledge is easy. Third, obtaining new information is much faster today.

Our rich understanding of science and technology is now needed to solve many serious problems. The human population has reached the size where we are utilizing all available resource of the planet. We are utilizing all of the agricultural land, all of the water, all of the forest and fishing resources. We are also polluting the planet that we live on.

We are polluting the land with fertilizers and pesticides; the oceans with acids and the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. We are using up top soil and ground water, thereby reducing our capacity to feed ourselves. We are using up petroleum, the energy source that our entire economy is dependent on. These are problems we were largely unaware of, fifty years ago. But these are problems that must be solved in your life times.

The big question facing your generation is, how can human beings live sustainably on planet earth. Your two broad goals on sustainability are 1) leave the planet as you first found it for your future generations; don’t use up the resources and don’t pollute the planet 2) everyone deserves to have an equal share of the earth’s resources.

Income strongly determines one’s opportunities in life. Many poor people succumb to chronic diseases and unhealthy environments. This inequality undermines our ability to live sustainably. We can’t ask the poor to leave the planet as they found it if they can’t support their families. Education, healthcare, employment are essential to having a sustainable society.

How can we be a successful scientist in 2013?
1. First choose a problem to solve
2. Ask questions to understand why it is not solved
3. Collaborate with those who can help
4. Develop a solution that works in the real world

Chronic diseases are our major burden and this burden will get worse. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia and other diseases. The good news is that the chronic diseases are largely preventable and more easily curable if detected early. One question that attracts me is how can we detect disease earlier when it can be more easily cured?

Can we use our increasing knowledge in molecular biology to identify biomarkers for early disease detection?

We need to collaborate very closely with clinicians who care for patients to find out exactly where they need help.

I think if we apply our technology to important clinical questions we will actually save medical expenditure and be well on our way to making a great contribution to society.

 

Aug
13
Tue
2013
Plenary Talk: Biosensor and Single Cell Manipulation using Nanopipettes @ Amriteshwari Hall
Aug 13 @ 10:06 am – 10:49 am

NaderNader Pourmand, Ph.D.
Director, UCSC Genome Technology Center,University of California, Santa Cruz


Biosensor and Single Cell Manipulation using Nanopipettes

Approaching sub-cellular biological problems from an engineering perspective begs for the incorporation of electronic readouts. With their high sensitivity and low invasiveness, nanotechnology-based tools hold great promise for biochemical sensing and single-cell manipulation. During my talk I will discuss the incorporation of electrical measurements into nanopipette technology and present results showing the rapid and reversible response of these subcellular sensors  to different analytes such as antigens, ions and carbohydrates. In addition, I will present the development of a single-cell manipulation platform that uses a nanopipette in a scanning ion-conductive microscopy technique. We use this newly developed technology to position the nanopipette with nanoscale precision, and to inject and/or aspirate a minute amount of material to and from individual cells or organelle without comprising cell viability. Furthermore, if time permits, I will show our strategy for a new, single-cell DNA/ RNA sequencing technology that will potentially use nanopipette technology to analyze the minute amount of aspirated cellular material.

Plenary Talk: Interspike Interval Distribution of Neuronal Model with distributed delay: Emergence of unimodal, bimodal and Power law @ Sathyam Hall
Aug 13 @ 1:20 pm – 2:00 pm

karmeshuKarmeshu, Ph.D.
Dean & Professor, School of Computer & Systems Sciences & School of Computational & Integrative Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.


Interspike Interval Distribution of Neuronal Model with distributed delay: Emergence of unimodal, bimodal and Power law

The study of interspike interval distribution of spiking neurons is a key issue in the field of computational neuroscience. A wide range of spiking patterns display unimodal, bimodal  ISI patterns including power law behavior. A challenging problem is to understand the biophysical mechanism which can generate  the empirically observed patterns. A neuronal model with distributed delay (NMDD) is proposed and is formulated as an integro-stochastic differential equation which corresponds to a non-markovian process. The widely studied IF and LIF models become special cases of this model. The NMDD brings out some interesting features when excitatory rates are close to inhibitory  rates rendering the drift close to zero. It is interesting that NMDD model with gamma type memory kernel can also account for bimodal ISI pattern. The mean delay of the memory kernels plays a significant role in bringing out the transition from unimodal to bimodal  ISI distribution. It is interesting to note that when a collection of neurons group together and fire together, the ISI distribution exhibits  power law.

 

Invited Talk: Nanomaterials for ‘enzyme-free’ biosensing @ Amriteshwari Hall
Aug 13 @ 2:17 pm – 2:35 pm

SatheeshSatheesh Babu T. G., Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Sciences, School of Engineering, Amrita University, Coimbatore, India


Nanomaterials for ‘enzyme-free’ biosensing

Enzyme based sensors have many draw backs such as poor storage stability, easily affected by the change in pH and temperature and involves complicated enzyme immobilization procedures.  To address this limitation, an alternative approach without the use of enzyme, “non-enzymatic” has been tried recently. Choosing the right catalyst for direct electrochemical oxidation / reduction of a target molecule is the key step in the fabrication of non-enzymatic sensors.

Non-enzymatic sensors for glucose, creatinine, vitamins and cholesterol are fabricated using different nanomaterials, such as nanotubes, nanowires and nanoparticles of copper oxide, titanium dioxide, tantalum oxide, platinum, gold and graphenes. These sensors selectively catalyse the targeted analyte with very high sensitivity. These nanomaterials based sensors combat the drawbacks of enzymatic sensors.

Satheesh

Delegate Talk: Novel Cell-Based Biosensors for High Throughput Toxin Detection and Drug Screening Applications @ Amriteshwari Hall
Aug 13 @ 4:08 pm – 4:23 pm
Delegate Talk:  Novel Cell-Based Biosensors for High Throughput Toxin Detection and Drug Screening Applications @ Amriteshwari Hall | Vallikavu | Kerala | India

Anupama Natarajan, James Hickman and Peter Molnar


Novel Cell-Based Biosensors for High Throughput Toxin Detection and Drug Screening Applications

Over the last decade there has been focus on the development of cellbased biosensors to detect environmental toxins or to combat the threats of biological warfare. These sensors have been shown to have multiple applications including understanding function and behaviour at the cellular and tissue levels, in cell electrophysiology and as drug screening tools that can eliminate animal testing. These factors make the development of cell-based biosensors into high throughput systems a priority in pharmacological, environmental and defence industries (Pancrazio J J et al. 1999, Kang G et al. 2009, Krinke D et al. 2009). We have developed a high through-put in vitro cell-silicon hybrid platform that could be used to analyze both cell function and response to various toxins and drugs. Our hypothesis was that by utilizing surface modification to provide external guidance cues as well as optimal growth conditions for different cell types (Cardiac and Neuronal), we could enhance the information output and content of such a system. An intrinsic part of this study was to create ordered or patterned functional networks of cells on Micro-electrode arrays (MEA). Such engineered networks had a two-fold purpose in that they not only aided in a more accurate analysis of cell response and cell and tissue behaviour, but also increased the efficiency of the system by increasing the connectivity and placement of the cells over the recording electrodes. Here we show the response of this system to various toxins and drugs and the measurement of several vital cardiac parameters like conduction velocity and refractory period (Natarajan A et al. 2011)

Aug
14
Wed
2013
Plenary Talk: Combined Crystallography and SAXS Methods for Studying Macromolecular Complexes @ Amriteshwari Hall
Aug 14 @ 9:38 am – 10:19 am

JeffPerryJeff Perry, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, University of California, Riverside


Combined Crystallography and SAXS Methods for Studying Macromolecular Complexes

Recent developments in small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) are rapidly providing new insights into protein interactions, complexes and conformational states in solution, allowing for detailed biophysical quantification of samples of interest1. Initial analyses provide a judgment of sample quality, revealing the potential presence of aggregation, the overall extent of folding or disorder, the radius of gyration, maximum particle dimensions and oligomerization state. Structural characterizations may include ab initio approaches from SAXS data alone, or enhance structural solutions when combined with previously determined crystal/NMR domains. This combination can provide definitions of architectures, spatial organizations of the protein domains within a complex, including those not yet determined by crystallography or NMR, as well as defining key conformational states. Advantageously, SAXS is not generally constrained by macromolecule size, and rapid collection of data in a 96-well plate format provides methods to screen sample conditions. Such screens include co-factors, substrates, differing protein or nucleotide partners or small molecule inhibitors, to more fully characterize the variations within assembly states and key conformational changes. These analyses are also useful for screening constructs and conditions that are most likely to promote crystal growth. Moreover, these high throughput structural determinations can be leveraged to define how polymorphisms affect assembly formations and activities. Also, SAXS-based technologies may be potentially used for novel structure-based screening, for compounds inducing shape changes or associations/diassociations. This is addition to defining architectural characterizations of complexes and interactions for systems biology-based research, and distinctions in assemblies and interactions in comparative genomics. Thus, SAXS combined with crystallography/NMR and computation provides a unique set of tools that should be considered as being part of one’s repertoire of biophysical analyses, when conducting characterizations of protein and other macromolecular interactions.

1 Perry JJ & Tainer JA. Developing advanced X-ray scattering methods combined with crystallography and computation. Methods. 2013 Mar;59(3):363-71.

Jeff (1)