Challenges and strategies for magnetic resonance in the Barcelona Structural Biology Hub

An initiative of the Spanish Singular Scientific and Technological NMR infrastructure of the University of Barcelona

The NMR laboratory of the University of Barcelona is part of the Spanish network of Scientific and Technological Infrastructures. It is located in the Barcelona Science Parc and is part of two excellence campus (Barcelona Knowledge Campus –BKC-and Health Universitat de Barcelona-HUBc-). Together with other large infrastructures in the same area (the synchrotron light source Alba, and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center) constitute one of the pillars of the present and future competitiveness of biotechnology and structural biology in the Barcelona area, Catalonia and Spain. To serve its mission to provide access to the latest enabling technologies for the biosciences, the University of Barcelona NMR laboratory plans to focus on two rapidly emerging fields: the study of biological solids by NMR and Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP). While the former holds promise to open extremely important areas of research for biomedicine such as membrane proteins and amyloids, the later breaks the largest individual limitation of NMR which is its low sensitivity. The initial successes achieved by leading researchers in the field in bringing together solid state NMR and DNP are imposing a change in paradigm.

The University of Barcelona, in collaboration with Bruker, is organizing for March 14th 2012 a one-day symposium in which members of the International Advisory Board of the Barcelona NMR laboratory will present the state of the art in Biosolids NMR and DNP as well as in the coordination of NMR in other structural biology hubs in Europe.

The BCN Biosolids NMR and DNP symposium will take place just after another NMR related event, the BioNMR meeting with computational experts that will be held in the same venue March 12 and 13 (http://mmb.irbbarcelona.org/BCN_BSandDNP/). Together, the two meetings will provide a forum to analyze challenges and opportunities of state of the art NMR in biomedicine and its linkage to other platforms.

The following speakers have already accepted to participate in the BCN Biosolids and DNP symposium:

  • Mikael Akke (Lund)
  • Marc Baldus (Utrecht)
  • Geoffrey Bodenhausen (Paris and Lausanne)
  • Eike Brunner (Dresden)
  • Ulrich Günther (Birmingham)
  • Jochem Stuppe (Billerica)

Attendance is open but registration is requested for organization purposes. Scientific sessions will run from 10 to 17 with coffee and lunch breaks. You can register by clicking here.