Satellite Meetings
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Cellular and Molecular Biophysical Techniques
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The graduate course “Cellular and molecular Biophysical techniques” was organized by the Biophysics Disciplinary Core of Asociación de Universidades Grupo Montevideo (BC-AUGM). This is the fourth course organized by BC-AUGM, the previous editions having large attendance and excellent feedback from the participants. The main goal is to introduce graduate students to a wide variety of biophysical methods that are currently used for the study of biological and biomimetic systems. We believe that the promotion of this type of courses is important to strengthen the Biophysical area and contributes to the training of young scientists from South America and to link research groups from different universities and research Centers. The course has been organized in two parts: a virtual, theoretical and applications one (from March 17th to June 26th, 2025) and a practical part, to be held in the University of Campinas, UNICAMP and CNPEM/Brazil, as a satellite event to the 49th Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Biophysics Society, SBBf. The on-going theoretical part (https://grupomontevideo.org/site/escuela-de-verano-tecnicas-de-biofisica-celular-y-molecular/) includes the following subjects: X-Ray crystallography: XRD, SAXS, XPCS, Cryo-EM, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Circular Dichroism, Fluorescence, probes and microscopy, atomic force microscope-force spectroscopy, Computational biology, Optical Tweezers and Infrared spectroscopy. 20 selected students of the theoretical course will experiment some of these techniques, in Campinas.
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Date: from October 24th to 28th, 2025
Location: UNICAMP and CNPEM/Brazil
Prof. Eneida de Paula (UNICAMP), Lisandro J. F. Lockhart (Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de La Plata, Argentina), Maria Gabriela Rivas (Unv. Litoral, Argentina), Victor Castro (Univ. Chile)
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Evolutionary Biochemistry in the Study of Mutations
Evolutionary Biochemistry is the field that combines molecular evolution methods such as identification of homologs, conservation and coevolution analyses, phylogeny inference, and ancestral sequence reconstruction with computational and experimental methods focused on protein structure and function. In this course, we will explain how these methodologies can be useful for planning and interpreting site-directed mutagenesis experiments, as well as contextualizing non-synonymous mutations in clinical studies, enabling the formulation of possible hypotheses about their effect at the protein level and how such changes follow or contradict trends observed evolutionarily, analyzing patterns of conservation and coevolution.
Topics to be covered: Construction of large domain and protein alignments, conservation and coevolution analyses in homologs, introduction to protein structure analysis, interpretation of non-synonymous mutations.
Methodology: Lectures demonstrating the use of protein sequence and structure databases, alignment and structural analysis tools, and calculation of conservation and coevolution.
Aims: the student should be able to obtain and align sequences of homologs to the one of interest to map mutations and assess their evolutionary context through conservation and evolution calculations, map mutations in experimental structures or computational models to formulate hypotheses regarding possible consequences for protein structure and function.
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Date: October 28th, 2025
Location: UNICAMP
Prof. Lucas Bleicher (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
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Registration link here
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