Faculty Talks, Poster Sessions During Molecular Biophysics Retreat

The Molecular Biophysics Program hosted its 16th annual retreat Oct. 22 at Wadsworth Mansion in Middletown. The day-long event included two poster sessions and talks by three Wesleyan faculty and two guests. The event also allowed students and faculty to discuss their current research.

Rich Olson, assistant professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, delivered a talk on “Understanding membrane specificity in a family of bacterial pore-forming toxins.”

Joseph Coolon, assistant professor of biology, spoke on “The role of gene regulatory network structure in genome evolution.”

Candice Etson, assistant professor of physics, spoke on “A Single-molecule Toolkit: Using TIRF Microscopy to Study Molecular Interactions and Dynamics.”

Haribabu Arthanari, a lecturer of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, presented a talk titled “Therapeutic Targeting of Protein-Protein Interactions Part -1: Deciphering the protein landscape by NMR Spectroscopy.”

The event’s keynote speaker was John Kuriyan, investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor of molecular and cell biology and chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley. Kuriyan spoke on “Structural Mechanisms in Protein Kinase Regulation.”

The event was sponsored by the NIGMS Molecular Biophysics Training Grant GM08271, Department of Chemistry and Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. (Photos by Jennifer Langdon)