3rd FrenchBIC summer school on methods for studying metals in biology: october 2nd-7th 2022

Cette école, qui se déroulera en anglais, permettra à quarante jeunes chercheurs/chercheuses (du doctorat aux premières années après le recrutement chercheur·e/ingénieur·e) de se former grâce à des cours et des travaux pratiques aux méthodes d’études des métaux en biologie. Le petit nombre de participant·e·s permettra d’organiser des TPs en groupes de 5, et de favoriser les interactions avec les enseignant·e·s. Les inscriptions seront bon marché (300€) pour favoriser la participation des plus jeunes. Les personnes employées par le CNRS peuvent obtenir de la formation permanente la prise en charge complète de leurs frais. Pour participer à cette école, la première étape consiste à remplir le formulaire ci dessous. Le comité d’organisation sélectionnera les participant·es qui devront ensuite s’inscrire.

This summer school will provide training for young researchers, young assistant professors, engineers and technicians, PhD students and post doctoral researchers. 40 people will attend. This number is small, in order to favour the interactions between the participants and the teachers (who will be staying for the entire duration of the school), and to run practical sessions in 8 groups of 5 participants. The generosity of our sponsors has allowed us to offer low registration fees (which include accommodation, all meals and transportation between Carry le Rouet and Marseille). You are entitled free registration and travel if you are paid by CNRS (irrespective of whether you are permanent researcher, technical staff, PhD student or postdoctoral researcher). To attend, the first step consists in applying using the form below. The organization committee will then select the successful candidates and let them know. In a second step, the selected participants will have to register and pay for this, unless their fees are covered by the CNRS.

• CNRS Institut National de Chimie,
• Aviesan
• CEA, Cadarache.
• Aix Marseille Université, Fédération de chimie
• CNRS, Insitut de microbiologie de la méditerranée
• IM2B
• Société Chimique de France, section régionale PACA
• Labex Arcane
• Labex Charmmat
• Association française de RPE
• Dutscher
• Glindemann
• and you?

Arrival: Sunday 2nd, afternoon (2pm bus from the Saint-Charles train station in Marseille to Carry le Rouet), 1st lecture at 6pm. Departure by bus from Carry to Marseille Saint-Charles on Friday 7th, after breakfast.

Programme_MetBio

Lectures (two days), in Carry le Rouet:

• Metals in biology: Clotilde Policar, ENS Paris, F
• Fundamentals of coordination chemistry, applications to biological systems: Frédéric Banse, Paris Orsay, F
• NMR: Sabine Hediger. CEA Grenoble, F
• EPR: Maxie Roessler, Imperial College London, UK
• Vibrationnal spectroscopy : Smilja Todorovic, ITQB, Lisbon, P
• XR crystallography : Elsa Garcin, AMU, Marseille, F
• CryoEM : Petra Wendler, Postdam, G
• X-Ray absorption: Serena DeBeer, MPI, Mulheim, G
• Electrochemistry: Christophe Léger, CNRS, Marseille, F
• Theoretical chemistry (DFT/MD): Jochen Blumberger, UCL, London, UK
• “In cell” spectroscopy: Geneviève Blondin, CEA, Grenoble, F
• Fast kinetics: Jalila Simaan, CNRS/AMU, F, and Vincent Fourmond (CNRS/AMU)

Four practicals (half a day each), in Marseille:

• NMR, Hélène Launay, Mehdi Yemloul, CNRS, Marseille.
• EPR, Emilien Etienne, Frédéric Biaso, Sylvain Bertaina, Olivier Pilone, AMU, Marseille.
• Electrochemistry. Vincent Fourmond & Christophe Léger, CNRS, Marseille.
• One to choose in this list (the organization committee will try to follow the applicants’ requests)
  • Phylogeny: Frauke Baymann, CNRS, Marseille. The goal is to understand the function of redox enzymes by analyzing their sequences and structures from an evolutionary perspective, recognize building blocks and structural motifs, link specificity and selectivity of catalyzed reactions to the evolutionary history of the enzyme, the parent organism and it’s geochemical environment. The practical may be adapted to the systems that the participants would like to discuss in particular.
  • DFT, Maylis Orio, CNRS/AMU, Marseille. The students will learn how to perform quantum chemical calculations on simple systems relevant to bio-inorganic chemistry (radicals and transitions metal complexes). They will be taught how to optimize a structure and determine its energy minimum. They will be shown how electrons are distributed within the systems and how to translate this information into a molecular orbital diagram. Last but not least, they will be introduced to optical spectroscopy through the theoretical prediction of IR and UV-vis spectra.
  • Stopped flow, Jalila Simaan, CNRS, Marseille. The goal of this practical is to get familiar with a stopped-flow apparatus and see possible applications in the field of bioinorganic chemistry with selected exemples (enzyme kinetics, intermediate trapping, electron transfers). The practical will include both experimental aspects (manipulation of the machine) and data treatment steps.
  • X-Ray crystallography and structure predictions (alphafold), Christophe Decroos, Elsa Garcin, CNRS/AMU, Marseille. The first part of this practical will be focused on informations that can be found in the Protein Data Bank (structure coordinates, density maps, etc…) to gain more insights into critical structure analysis. Students will then run through the initial steps of structure resolution using molecular replacement from data collected at the synchrotron. This will allow students to better understand how a structure model is built from experimental data. Finally, students will use AlphaFold to predict structures of (putative) metalloenzymes / metalloproteins. Examples of structure prediction using AlphaFold may be adapted to enzymes / proteins of personnal interest for the students.

Poster session.