From Molecules to Living Organisms: An Interplay Between Biology and Physics

Eva Pebay-Peyroula is Professor at the Grenoble University, France. She received her PhD in Physics in 1986. In the following years, she changed her research interest towards structural biology. During the last 20 years she focuses on membrane proteins, first bacterial rhodopsins and then mitochondrial carriers, and is also interested in the development of novel crystallization methods based on lipidic phases. Hugues Nury is a CNRS researcher interested in structural biology of membrane proteins, and especially of ion channels. He uses biochemistry, biophysics and crystallography to understand the operation mechanism of neurotransmitter-gated ion channels. François Parcy is a CNRS research director. He started as a molecular geneticist of Arabidopsis seed and flower development. In more recent years, he has focused on transcriptional regulations during the development of flowers. He follows an integrative structural biology approach to understand how molecular properties of transcription and chromatin regulators at the atomic scale determine their actions at the genome level. Rob W. H. Ruigrok worked as a group leader with the EMBL in Grenoble for 14 years and became a Professor at the University of Grenoble in 2003. He worked mainly on RNA viruses as influenza, rabies and measles viruses. He uses biochemistry, electron microscopy and crystallography to show how these viruses make new RNA, both mRNA and new viral RNAs, using nucleoproteins and polymerase binding RNA. Christine Ziegler is Professor at the University of Regensburg, Germany. She got a PhD in Radiation Biophysics in 1996. After training as Medical Physicist she moved into the field of structural biology of membrane proteins and worked intensively on the molecular mechanism of secondary transporters. Her main expertise is in 2D and 3D crystallization of membrane transporters and channels as well as in Single Particle Analysis and cryo-electron microscopy. Leticia F. Cugliandolo received her Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, in 1991. After post-docs in Universita di Roma I, La Sapienza, and CEA/Saclay she joined the Physics Department at Ecole Normale Superieure de Paris in 1997. She is currently a full professor at Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris and the director of Ecole de Physique des Houches since 2007. Her research focuses on statistical physics and condensed matter problems. She received the Marie Curie Excellence Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Prix Langevin of the French Physical Society.

PART I: CONCEPTS IN CELL BIOLOGY AND EXAMPLES OF MULTISCALE STUDIES IN BIOLOGY; PART II: CONCEPTS IN PHYSICS AND EMERGING METHODS; PART III: PLANT DEVELOPMENT: FROM GENES TO GROWTH; PART IV: FORCES IN BIOLOGY: RESHAPING MEMBRANES; PART V: CONFORMATIONAL CHANGES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS IN DISEASES; PART VI: MEMBRANE TRANSPORTERS: FROM STRUCTURE TO FUNCTION