Nobel Reflections

Huck Institutes News | October 2024

October 31, 2024

October 2024. This month, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to a trio of scientists who, as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences put it, “cracked the code for proteins’ amazing structures.” Half the prize went to David Baker at U of Washington, for computationally designing entirely new kinds of proteins. Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper, both from Google DeepMind, London, shared the other half of the prize for AI-enabled protein structure prediction. In our lead story this month, three Huck researchers working on similar challenges chime in with their thoughts on what this moment means for the life sciences writ large.

Slice of Life

Penn State and the American Physiology Society will celebrate a half century of research at the groundbreaking Noll Laboratory, welcoming attendees of the 2024 Integrative Physiology of Exercise Conference.

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Combining the Integrative Physiology of Exercise conference with the 50th anniversary of Noll Lab provides a rare opportunity for the field to look back and forward. Our hope is that this will serve as a model for future IPE meetings.

“I look forward to dynamic, cutting-edge research presentations and the opportunity to host and interact with other physiologists interested in exercise from throughout the US and abroad,” said Professor of Kinesiology, Physiology, and Medicine David Proctor, the co-lead organizer for the commemoration events.

The conference will be held November 20–22 in State College and open with the placing of a historical marker at Noll Lab, established in 1973 as the Human Performance Laboratory. Register here for Commemoration Celebration Events.

Appointments & Accolades

Gustavo Nader, professor of kinesiology and physiology in the Penn State College of Health and Human Development, has been named the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Loyd Huck Chair in Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Physiology. During his term as a Huck chair, he aims to continue developing research connections across diverse disciplines.

“Huck is the beating heart of the life sciences at Penn State, and it provides a fertile environment for discovery in so many different directions,” Nader said. “This recognition means we are doing the right thing. It means a lot to me.”

Mihail Kantor, assistant research professor of nematology, has been appointed to the executive board of the Society of Nematologists (SON). A nonprofit, international organization dedicated to advancing the science of nematology in its fundamental and economic aspects, SON is the highest professional organization for nematology and fosters knowledge across all areas of nematology.

“My goal is to develop and communicate strategies that not only raise awareness but also highlight the broader implications of nematodes on agricultural and ecological health.” Kantor said.

Next-Gen Science

The following students from Huck’s Intercollege Graduate Degree Programs were among 110 Penn State graduate students awarded fellowships this month.

Distinguished Graduate Fellows:

  • Delanie Crabtree, Pritchard Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in the College of Medicine, Neuroscience

  • Otto Kailing, Eva J. Pell Distinguished Graduate Fellowship, Plant Biology

University Graduate Fellows:

  • Paula Blanco Ortiz, Ecology

  • Nikol Chantzi, Bioinformatics and Genomics

  • Anushka Dutta, Plant Biology

  • Shui Li Eu-Balint, Plant Biology

  • Natalie Ford, Ecology

  • Andrew Hamacher, Neuroscience

  • Caellum Impelluso, Kinesiology

  • Kelly Sammons, Plant Biology

  • William Vuyk, Ecology

Core Topics

Our Flow Cytometry Facility here at the Huck is equipped with flow cytometers and cell sorters that enable researchers to examine cell samples within the range of the micron.

A new set of videos are now available on the facility’s website to explain specific services and instrumentation. In coming months, similar videos will be published explaining the research capacities of all 11 Huck core facilities.

Nobel Reflections

This month, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists credited with historic breakthroughs surrounding proteins and their structures. David Baker has unlocked the ability to design proteins for specific tasks, while Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper have created the AI-powered AlphaFold Protein Structure Database to predict protein structures from amino acid sequences. Three researchers here at Huck chime in with their analysis:

“Proteins are workers of life, executing almost all aspects of cellular and extracellular actions, and their structures are intimately related to their functions. With the emergence of deep machine learning techniques, the structure prediction problem has been solved. My laboratory has developed our own means for protein design because for some time we have collaborated with David Baker, Brian Kulman, Stephen Mayo, and others. This collaboration has allowed us to design novel vaccines for HIV and COVID, among many other proteins that are regulatable by light or drugs.”

Nikolay Dokholyan, G. Thomas Passananti Professor of Pharmacology; Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

“In any domain in which large, high quality representative training data are available, modern machine learning algorithms offer unprecedented opportunities for extracting useful insights from data. Protein structure prediction is no exception. Ongoing work in the Penn State Center for Artificial Intelligence Foundations and Scientific Applications (CENSAI) and NSF National Synthesis Center for Emergence in the Molecular and Cellular Sciences led by Ed O'Brien of Chemistry is aimed at gaining such biological insights by leveraging recent breakthroughs in machine learning.”

Vasant Honavar, Huck Chair in Biomedical Data Sciences and AI; Professor and Edward Frymoyer Chair of Information Sciences and Technology

“One of the best features of AlphaFold is that it’s easy to use, even for people who don’t have an experience and knowledge with computer-based structure prediction. In our lab, undergraduate researchers can now contribute to several research projects by using AlphaFold3 to predict macromolecular structures thus propose experimental conditions for cryo-EM study. This means that even students who have limited time in the lab can still play an active role in our research project supported by NIH.”

Katsuhiko Murakami, Faculty Director of the Cryo-Electron Microscopy Core Facility; Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Hidden Gems

The Penn State Neuroscience Biorepository, an integrated specimen bank and clinical database, was established in 2016 at Penn State’s College of Medicine in Hershey, PA. Since that time, the Biorepository has collected more than 1,000 biological samples from consenting patients undergoing surgical procedures at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Through a new collaborative partnership between campuses, the facility will expand access to researchers at University Park.

“I am excited to facilitate the opportunity for our basic scientists in neuroscience, but also other disciplines of biology, to collaborate with our clinicians and neurosurgeons to extend our understanding of the human brain,” said Nikki Crowley, director of the Penn State Neuroscience Institute­–University Park. “There are truly so few places in the United States where you can access tissue like this, and I’m proud that Penn State is one of them.”

The Huck Catalysis (Huck C) program coordinates university-wide interdisciplinary Life Sciences research development and collaboration activities with an emphasis on scholarship that crosses multiple academic units. Working with other units, Huck C provides support and programming to facilitate research partnerships, support strategic planning, identify funding opportunities, form interdisciplinary collaborations, and submit these proposals through SIRO.

The following are exceptionally innovative, recurring, complex interdisciplinary research and education projects that require large-scale, long-term planning.

BTO's mission is to develop capabilities that leverage the unique properties of biology adaption, replication, resilience and complexity, to revolutionize how the United States defends the homeland and prepares and protects its warfighters. Research in BTO creates biotechnological capabilities that provide tactical care and restore function to injured warfighters, increase operational resilience, develop novel functional materials, and detect and protect against threats to maintain force readiness.

The goal of the Centers is to support collaborative research projects that bridge current personalized medicine efforts in human subjects with advances in animal genomics and genetic manipulation technologies, including the creation of interspecies somatic hybrids. By functionally linking these areas of research, the Centers aim to enhance the predictive value of preclinical studies through the use of precision animal models.

  • Due: December 15, 2024

  • Posted: October 4, 2024

  • Scientific/Research Contact: [email protected]

BIO welcomes proposals that incorporate or advance AI/ML approaches across the research supported in all the Divisions of the BIO Directorate. Proposals in response to this DCL must advance one or more goals represented by NSF biological sciences programs through incorporating or developing AI/ML approaches. Proposers are encouraged to include partnerships between biologists and experts in AI/ML from academia, industry, or other organizations.

Huck research attracts media attention from around the world. Here are a few highlights from this month: