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Interview of Dr. Paulo Mascarello Bisch, Head of the FisBio (Fisica Biologica) Laboratory, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Do you believe new collaborations possible in the future with groups of LBPA as well as beyond in the boarder frame of IDA? ]
During this time three Post-docs and three PhD students from our lab, have expended at least one year at LBPA, and one PhD student from LBPA have made a stay of four months at our lab in Rio de Janeiro. Further, senior researchers from both groups have made regular visits in both directions. This strong collaboration program have produced important results, as should be measured by two important publications (Batista PR et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2011, 7, 2348 and Batista PR et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2010, 12, 2850) concerning the development of a new method of analysis of collective motion in protein dynamics. Other high quality publications are in course and will be submitted as soon as possible. Our students are working up PhD thesis supported by both groups (cotutelle), which certainly will enrich theirs contends. One of these theses, that will be presented very soon, concerns a new method to induce local thermal excitations as a mean to explore the protein energy landscape. This new simulation strategy represents a clear improvement over the existing methods, and will be quite important to investigate protein dynamics and consequently the possible inhibition of their biological function. This should be quite important to improve the design of new drugs for specific targets. Further, a new method for protein-protein docking is also in progress involving, in mean time, also another Brazilian group from São Paulo (UFABC). Until now these several collaborations have been very fruitful and take advantage of the scientific ambience at LBPA and ENS Cachan, and should be extended even for experimental projects concerning other groups and laboratories of IDA.
During this time three Post-docs and three PhD students from our lab, have expended at least one year at LBPA, and one PhD student from LBPA have made a stay of four months at our lab in Rio de Janeiro. Further, senior researchers from both groups have made regular visits in both directions. This strong collaboration program have produced important results, as should be measured by two important publications (Batista PR et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2011, 7, 2348 and Batista PR et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2010, 12, 2850) concerning the development of a new method of analysis of collective motion in protein dynamics. Other high quality publications are in course and will be submitted as soon as possible. Our students are working up PhD thesis supported by both groups (cotutelle), which certainly will enrich theirs contends. One of these theses, that will be presented very soon, concerns a new method to induce local thermal excitations as a mean to explore the protein energy landscape. This new simulation strategy represents a clear improvement over the existing methods, and will be quite important to investigate protein dynamics and consequently the possible inhibition of their biological function. This should be quite important to improve the design of new drugs for specific targets. Further, a new method for protein-protein docking is also in progress involving, in mean time, also another Brazilian group from São Paulo (UFABC). Until now these several collaborations have been very fruitful and take advantage of the scientific ambience at LBPA and ENS Cachan, and should be extended even for experimental projects concerning other groups and laboratories of IDA.
You have co-organised in partnership with the LBPA and the IDA, the DEFIS (Challenges) Workshop held in October at the ENS Cachan. What conclusions can you draw from this event which which has highlighted interdisciplinarity in almost all presentations? What are, from your own point of view, the benefits to be derived from such an interdisciplinarity approach ?
This two days workshop has been very useful for the participants. The main purpose of the meeting was to put together experimentalist and theoretical people, to exchange their experience with large biological macromolecular assemblies. Nowadays computational methods have been remarkable improved and new methods are available, as one can simulate very large molecular systems in a relatively large time scale, it is now more reliable that both experiments and computational simulations converge to have a complementary view about such large systems. The discussion followed after each presentation has revelled an interesting interplay between experiments and simulations. A relevant contribution from presentations was also that fundamental physical and physicochemical aspects of both the experimental and computational methods, has been presented by the participants followed by the discussion of the final biological consequences. This multidisciplinary approach seems to be more appropriated to actual challenges where a lot of biological data are available, so far suitable models and interpretation of most relevant biological phenomena are still required.