Workshop 1 NET-NANO: Tools to study biological systems
Dilluns, febrer 3 @ 9:10 am–4:00 pm
This first workshop will focus on cutting-edge tools and techniques used to investigate cellular processes and disease. The event will feature two plenary lectures by leading external experts, along with a series of presentations by IBEC researchers.
Speakers will present on a range of topics, including nanomechanics, atomic force microscopy, electron microscopy, surface nanopatterning, membrane protein function, interprotein charge transfer, and single-molecule imaging. The event will offer numerous opportunities for networking, discussion, and knowledge sharing.
Scheduled Programme:
09:10 – Marina Giannotti, IBEC group “Nanoprobes and Nanoswitches”, “Nanomechanics in seek for disease indicators”
09:40 – Aurora Dols Pérez, IBEC group “Nanoscale Bioelectrical Characterization”, “AFM as a tool for the study of drug delivery systems”
10:10 – Nisha Pawar, IBEC group “Molecular Bionics”, “Liquid phase Transmission Electron Microscopy and Machine Learning to understand structure and protein aggregation”
10:40 – Plenary: Elisabetta Ada Cavalcanti-Adam,University of Bayreuth (Germany), “Surface Nanopatterning for Investigating Receptor Clustering and Crosstalk in Cell Adhesion and Migration”
11:40 – Coffee Break & Challenge Board
12:10 – Anna Lagunas, IBEC group “Nanobioengineering”,“Unveiling membrane protein function with nanotools”
12:40 – Pau Gorostiza, IBEC group “Nanoprobes and Nanoswitches”, “Interprotein charge transfer in respiratory and photosynthetic chains”
13:10 – Networking Lunch
14:10 – Plenary: Prof María García-Parajo, Institute of Photonic Science (ICFO) & Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), “Single molecule imaging tools to unravel spatiotemporal compartmentalisation in living cells”
15:10 – Roundtable Discussion 15:40 – Farewell from Network Representatives
Plenary talks details:
Prof. Elisabetta Ada Cavalcanti-Adam, Chair of Cellular Biomechanics, Faculty of Engineering Science, University of Bayreuth, Germany.
Surface nanopatterning for Investigating Receptor Clustering and Crosstalk in Cell Adhesion and Migration
Advances in nanotechnology have provided powerful tools for precisely controlling the physical and chemical microenvironment and for guiding cellular behavior and communication. This talk will explore the use of surface nanopatterning techniques and their functionalization with adhesive ligands to study receptor clustering and its implications for crosstalk in the adhesion and migration of single and collective cells. We aim to elucidate the mechanisms underlying integrin signaling, cadherin-mediated cell-cell junctions, and their interplay during migration. Examples will highlight how these approaches provide understanding of fundamental cell biology and their potential implications in tissue regeneration and cancer metastasis.
Prof. Dr. E. Ada Cavalcanti-Adam is currently a full professor for Cellular Biomechanics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Education: doctor degree in Dental Medicine from Italy, M.Sc. degree in Biology from University of Pennsylvania (USA) and PhD in Biosciences at Heidelberg University.
She was Postdoctoral Fellow and later project leader at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart. After completing her Habilitation, from 2017 until 2023 she was research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg and head of the Central Scientific Facility “Cellular Biotechnology; she also served as adjunct faculty at the Heidelberg University.
In 2004 she received the Marie Curie Intra-European fellowship, in 2008 a fellowship from the „Christiane Nüsslein-Volhardt Foundation“ and the Prize „For Women in Science“. Her research focuses on the mechanobiology of cell adhesion, investigating how cells interact with their physical environment at the molecular level.
Prof. Dr. María García-Parajo, Institute of Photonic Science (ICFO) & Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA).
Single molecule imaging tools to unravel spatiotemporal compartmentalisation in living cells
Organisation by compartmentalisation is a general property of natural systems that efficiently facilitates and orchestrates biological events in space and time. Super-resolution microscopy and single molecule dynamic approaches have revealed that compartmentalisation starts at the nanometre scale with molecules organising and interacting transiently with each other following modularity principles. In this talk, I will provide an overview of recent super-resolution and single molecule dynamic approaches ideally tailored to study biological systems with exquisite spatiotemporal resolution. I will describe the combination of multicolour single particle tracking (SPT) at different labelling densities to resolve in real time multi-molecular interactions in living cells. Low density SPT conditions allows to reconstruct the mobility of individual molecules and their transient interactions, while high density conditions provide unique information on the spatial and temporal length scales of cellular regions re-visited (or forbidden) for molecules. We find that molecular diffusion, transient multi-molecular interactions and dynamic re-modelling of the environment play key roles regulating biological function.
Maria Garcia-Parajo is an ICREA Research Professor at ICFO-Institute of Photonic Sciences, leading the Single Molecule Biophotonics group. Her research focuses on the development of advanced optical techniques to the study of biological processes at the single molecular level on living cells. She obtained her PhD in Physical Electronics in 1993 at Imperial Colleague, UK. Previous experience includes research at L2M-CNRS Paris (France) and University of Twente (The Netherlands). To date she has published more than 200 publications and delivered more than 250 talks at international conferences and workshops upon invitation. She coordinates several international research projects, and is member of various international scientific advisory, executive and editorial boards. She has received several prestigious awards, including the Young Academy Research fellow award from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (1998), National Prize in Biophysics (2017), Advanced ERC grant (2017) and Emmy Noether Laurate from the European Physical Society (2020). She is co-coordinator of the Winter School in Advanced Microscopy Techniques for the Master in Interdisciplinary Sciences at BIST. Maria is actively involved in (inter)national actions to promote gender equity in Science.
