UTMB Structural Biology Symposium Features Dr. Karplus as Keynote Speaker

This years structure biology symposium held at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston Texas was kicked off by a talk from Dr. Martin Karplus. Dr. Karplus is famous for many things, the one in which I am most familiar is the Karplus equation, J=A+Bcos(dihedral)+Ccos2(dihedral) for J-coupling in NMR spectroscopy. Scalar J coupling in through bond interactions between spin 1/2 nuclei. I also noticed that Dr. Karplus was not centered only around his science but took a keen interest in the research done and presented in the graduate student poster contest. I also admired his balance in life as I watched him walk through the rose garden just below the dining room in Levin Hall. I am also trying to balance all the parts of my life. A wonderful wife, kids, exercise, and research all fill up my time, but I also like to leave some for music, reading, and writing (Note my last post on how little writing I have been doing!).






Many other great speakers also shared areas to new progress. Dr. Bill Goddard, III has a great library of theoretical structures of G-Protein Coupled Receptors that are predicting binding site and gross activity in blind tests. As these results are validated, the payoff in drug design is immense. Dr. Tom Ellenberger presented results that showed a result for DNA repair the involved two conformations of the same domain for activity. The morph movie that he showed reminded me of a robot on an assembly line.


This year the symposium also choose three of the best abstracts from the poster competition for presentation. I enjoyed that very much and hope that do that again next year.