CCB Seminar: Pilar Cossio

Name: CCB Seminar: Pilar Cossio
Start: 2020-03-25T14:00:00-04:00
End: 2020-03-25T15:15:00-04:00

Wednesday March 25, 2020

Due to Dr. Pilar Cossio’s limited internet connection this seminar has been pre-recorded. The Q&A segment will be live from 2:45 – 3:15pm.

2:00pm: Seminar

2:45pm: Q&A

Guest Presenter: Pilar Cossio, Ph.D., Max Planck Tandem Group Leader

Topic: Cryo-Electron Microscopy and Single-Molecule Methods: Leading to Biomedical Discoveries

Proteins are biological nanomachines that perform the most vital functions: from regulating gene expression to catalysing metabolic reactions. To understand these complex mechanisms it is important to characterise a protein’s metastable structures and the dynamics between the different conformations. In this seminar, I will present some mathematical methods developed to extract structural and dynamical information from two complementary biophysical experiments: cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and single-molecule force spectroscopy. Bayesian inference of cryo-EM can recover the conformational ensemble of ﬂexible biomolecules from the individual EM particles. Modelling of force spectroscopy allows us to extract dynamical information of the transition rates and paths from single-molecule trajectories. Furthermore, the characterisation of these protein mechanisms is key for future biomedical discoveries. I will ﬁnalise presenting an integrative computational protocol for drug discovery that builds on the structural and dynamical information of the protein target.

Zoom Instructions:

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android:
https://simonsfoundation.zoom.us/j/957293091

Or
Telephone:Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):
US: +1 646 558 8656 or +1 312 626 6799 or +1 301 715 8592 or +1 346 248 7799
Meeting ID: 957 293 091
International numbers available: https://simonsfoundation.zoom.us/u/ados79SpF

Or
H.323 room system:162.255.36.11 (US East)
Meeting ID: 957 293 091

About the Speaker

Since 2016, Pilar Cossio is a Max Planck Tandem Group Leader associated with the University of Antioquia (Colombia) and the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics (Germany). She earned a B.S. in physics from the University of Antioquia in 2007 and a Ph.D. in physics and chemistry of biological systems from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Italy in 2011. She held postdoctoral positions at the National Institutes of Health (NIH, USA) and at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics. Her main focus is the development of mathematical and computational methods to characterize proteins’ structures and dynamics from cryo-electron microscopy, single-molecule spectroscopy and biomolecular simulations.