Level of study
BAC +3
ECTS
5 credits
Component
Faculty of Science
Description
This course is a continuation of the Structural Biochemistry course in S5. Students will learn the basic concepts of the different approaches used for multiscale structural characterization and macromolecular interaction analysis. The advantages and limitations of all the tools will be highlighted so that students can understand the complementarity of these tools and know how to use them in an integrative way to answer a given biological question.
The tutorials will be a mix of structural analysis applications using visualization tools (Pymol type) as well as article analysis using a combination of the approaches studied in class. The students will then have to conceptualize their own experimental project to answer a given problem.
Objectives
Knowledge:
- Reminder on protein structural levels, interactions, folding and structural motifs.
- Determination of the primary structure of proteins by mass spectrometry: bottom-up and top-down proteomics.
- Biophysical techniques for the analysis of molecular interactions: basic theoretical concepts and introduction to the different approaches used (fluorescence, thermophoresis, fluorimetry, isothermal titration calorimetry, surface plasmon resonance).
- Low resolution structural analysis: basic theoretical concepts and introduction to the different approaches used (native mass spectrometry, hydrogen-deuterium exchange, ion mobility, SAXS).
- High-resolution structure determination of macromolecules: basic theoretical concepts and introduction to the different approaches used (crystallography, NMR, electron microscopy).
Know-how:
- Choose a tool or a set of tools of analysis to answer a structural and/or interactional problem.
- Analyze and interpret data related to the biophysical approaches studied.
- Be able to select experiments to answer specific questions.
Know how to be :
- To have the spirit of synthesis.
- To be able to work in a group.
Necessary pre-requisites
Structural Biochemistry S5, Enzymology S5, From Molecules to Cells S1, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Cell S2