Interdisciplinary event examines ‘Life in Motion’
BY JOHN CANNON
Vijay Pande
Interdisciplinary research ranging from the swimming movements of microorganisms to the lumbering of elephants and dinosaurs will be showcased at "Life in Motion," an all-day symposium on Oct. 25 at the James H. Clark Center. The event builds on the annual Bio-X Symposium series and will showcase cross-disciplinary approaches drawing on chemistry, biology, physics and computer science.
Among the 10 experts on faculty at various institutions in the United States and abroad who will speak is Vijay Pande, associate professor of chemistry and of structural biology. He studies small protein structures in the body that, when improperly assembled, are linked to illnesses like cancer and Alzheimer's disease. It turns out that these jumbled structures are toxic to cells—nerve cells, in the case of Alzheimer's disease.
And while all that may be common knowledge in Pande's field, what's unique about much of his work is that he uses computers to create models that help him understand why this "misfolding" of proteins occurs. But even the best supercomputers strain under the burden of the complex calculations required to build these virtual models.
"We needed to create the resources for ourselves," Pande said. So he and his colleagues developed a downloadable program called Folding@Home that uses the processors in personal computers via a standard Internet connection. Now, instead of just the 10,000 processors of a supercomputer, the Folding@Home project allows Pande to access 250,000 processors in home and office computers throughout the world; it also includes a distributing-computing project that utilizes processors in Sony PlayStation 3 units worldwide. Computer users download the program, allowing the Pande lab to access the unused portion of the computer's processor.
Pande's presentation—"New Paradigms for Molecular Simulation: From Protein Folding to the Ribosome"—is scheduled from 11:25 a.m. to noon. At 3 p.m., Claire Tomlin, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford, will discuss the application of her experience in aeronautical research to understanding the structure of a biological cell.
"It's really an engineering approach to biology," Professor Russ Altman, chair of the Department of Bioengineering, said of the interdisciplinary approach to research. "Computer simulations are done before an airplane ever flies or a building is built, but we don't apply this method to biology."
Programs like Bio-X and Simbios aim to change that. Bio-X is Stanford's interdisciplinary life sciences initiative. Simbios, an abbreviation for Physics-based Simulation of Biological Structures, is the National Institutes of Health Center for Biomedical Computation at Stanford.
"As a student, you come in with the impression that you're supposed to think within the confines of your own discipline," Altman said. He believes that the traditional way of teaching doesn't encourage students—or faculty, for that matter—to approach academic pursuits in novel ways.
Altman hopes that faculty and students who attend Life in Motion will be inspired to apply tools from other fields to their own areas of interest, as well as to utilize their own knowledge to address problems in other disciplines.
"The symposium gives them a forum for those ideas," added Altman, noting that plenty of opportunities exist for faculty to get involved with Simbios. Anyone interested should contact Altman or Professor Scott Delp, former chair of the Department of Bioengineering, during the event.
The public is welcome, and all speakers are expected to give a brief introduction of their talk that will be understandable to non-experts. Presentations will begin after a breakfast and welcome at 8 a.m. by Delp, Altman and Carla Shatz, director of Bio-X and professor of biological sciences and of neurobiology. The entire symposium will be held in the Clark Center auditorium.
"It's a great excuse to see what is literally an award-winning building," Altman added.
The program will conclude with a reception and poster session, scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m., where graduate students and postdoctoral fellows will showcase their research. Information is online at https://simtk.org/home/lifeinmotion.
John Cannon is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.
