Indian Institute of Technology Bombay from Oct 18-20, 2002 organized THE FIRST INDIAN SYMPOSIUM OF THE PROTEIN SOCIETY on “Protein structure and function”. 250 scientists attended the meeting. There were 42 oral presentations, with about half of them different parts of the world and other half from India. There was strong student participation with 76 poster presentations spread over 2 days. Dr. (Ms) Manju Sharma, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, who has been responsible for initiating and supporting several Biotechnology related activities in India, gave the inaugural address. Dr Sharma emphasized the need for strengthening the Protein Science activity in view of crucial role played by them development of various technologies.

The symposium had a high level of diversity in terms of topics covered but yet maintained a focus. The technical sessions began with Ramachandran lecture given by Harold Scheraga on ab initio prediction of protein structure by global optimization of potential energy. The five distinct themes covered were - de novo protein design, protein structure, protein folding, proteins and diseased state, membrane channel proteins, membrane-protein interaction and cytoskeleton organization dynamics and diseased state. The Ramachandran lecture was followed by talks by P. Balaram on use of conformationally controlled residues in design of protein mimics and Bob Stroud, who spoke on the intricate glycerol channel. The next section on Protein structure had talks by M. Vijayan on ligand specificity in lectins, Shekhar Mande on chaperonins found in Mycobacterium, Dinakar Salunke spoke on structural convergence in an antibody response. This was followed by two talks on NMR of proteins with one by R.V. Hosur on plasticity and dynamics of HIV-proteases and David Craik described conformation of disulfide-locked circular protein toxins found in nature. The next session dealt with Protein folding where in H. Roder talked about early intermediates in protein folding and J. Udgaonkar on folding intermediates in barstar. A. Surolia talked on legume lectins as paradigms for equilibrium folding studies of oligomeric proteins and R. Varadarajan spoke on new approaches to the design of temperature sensitive mutants of a globular protein from amino acid sequence. The protein folding session concluded with an interesting talk by B. Bhattacharyya on Chaperone like activity of Tubulin.

The next section was devoted to Proteins, diseased state and drug design. Girish Sahani gave the first talk on deciphering the molecular mechanism of the extraordinarily stringent substrate specificity of the streptokinase-plasminogen activator complex that had implications in the de novo design of tailor-made proteases. The next three talk dealt with protein aggregation. John E. Maggio spoke on folding and misfolding in neurodegenerative disease: A-b amyloid, and Alzheimer's and E. Gazit spoke on the mechanism of amyloid fibrils self-assembly, which had implications for the design of fibrilization inhibitors. Eva -M. Mandelkow spoke on role of tau protein in neurite outgrowth, axonal traffic, and Alzheimer neurodegeneration. This was followed by a talk by Ch. Mohan Rao on a crystallin: a small heat shock protein with chaperone activity and then G. M. Anantharamiah on Peptide mimics of antiatherogenic apoliporpotein A-1 and E. This was followed by a talk by R.M. Kini on development of a novel class of anticoagulant peptides based on the structure of a snake venom prothrombin activator. This session concluded with two of IIT Bombay alumnus, Rajesh S. Gokhale who spoke on crosstalk between fatty acid synthases and polyketide synthases in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Partha Saha who spoke on studies on two proteins from Leishmania donovani to search for unique mechanism of cell cycle regulation in the parasite.

The membrane-channel protein section began with an overview talk by J. P. Rosenbusch on problems and promises associated with determination of structure of membrane-proteins at atomic resolution. This was followed by elegant structural details of transport mechanism across the periplasmic space by Ben Luisi. This was followed by talks on soluble proteins that insert into membranes under an impulse wherein William Cramer talked about Colicin-recptor interaction and Anil Lala described models for insertion and translocation of diphtheria toxin across membranes. Jean-Marie Ruysschaert then spoke on conformational changes detected in multidrug transporters. S. Grissmer then presented data on toxins and drugs modulating potassium channels whereas M. Mathews described the chirameric potassium channels. Michael Blanton on The Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor gave the last talk in this section where he addressed questions relating to membrane-spanning domain being composed of a bundle of a-helices or a mixture of a-helices and b-strands. The membrane-protein section began with a talk by Stephen H. White who addressed in detail how membranes shape protein structure. This was followed by a talk by Ashish Arora on solution structure and dynamics of the Outer Membrane Protein A transmembrane domain in detergent micelles by NMR. R. Nagaraj described a series of membrane-active antimicrobial peptides and Satyajit Mayor talked on the nano-scale structure of GPI-anchored protein containing rafts in living cell. The last talk in this section by Musti J. Swamy dealt with interaction of bovine seminal plasma protein, PDC-109 with lipid membranes.

The last section dealt with Cytoskeleton organization dynamics and diseased state. Les Wilson opened the session with a talk on Microtubule dynamics and the mechanisms of action of microtubule-targeted antimitotic anticancer drugs, which was followed by a lucid description of Structure of kinesin and interactions with microtubules by E. Mandelkow. Amitabha Chattopadhyay gave a talk on Protein Conformation and Dynamics using the Wavelength-Selective Fluorescence Approach. Daniel L. Purich talked about Actoclampin: The Newly Recognized ATP-dependent motor responsible for Cell Crawling. This was followed by a talk by Mark M. Rasenick on Interaction between G proteins and the Cytoskeleton and its implications for depression and the action of anti-depressant drugs. Dulal Panda gave the last talk of the meeting on antiproliferative mechanism of action of natural flavonoids that act by perturbation of microtubule polymerization dynamics through tubulin binding. The meeting thus covered various aspects of protein structure and function ranging from de novo prediction to cellular function.