Biomolecules Aren’t Rocks: Temperature Sensing and Protein Dynamics

Textbooks and structural models traditionally depict proteins as static, rigid entities. While these snapshots from experimental techniques such as X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) are incredibly useful, they obscure the fundamental reality that life exists in motion. Capturing the full scope and implications of protein dynamics remains a major challenge for experimental and computational techniques alike.

In this Presidential Lecture, Sonya Hanson will discuss the ongoing journey to understand biological temperature sensing — a process that inherently relies on molecules changing shape as a function of small temperature changes. She will highlight how this puzzle has motivated community challenges and methods development to better capture the full conformational landscape of molecules from cryo-EM data. Combined with molecular simulation and recent innovations in machine learning, these technological developments are shifting our focus from rigid structures to dynamic ensembles and refining our ability to see how proteins function.