Omics – An Introduction
Meeting Room: South JCR, South Building, St Hilda’s College, Oxford
Registration: South Building Foyer
Date: Thursday, 24th September
The aim of the workshop is to provide the views of specialists in omics technologies, who have also extensive experience in toxinology, on available analytical tools and how to use them to analyze venom in the context of biological relevant studies. Participants will have the opportunity to expose their project to the speakers’ panel and receive constructive comments.
Organisers:
>Professor Juan Calvete, The Instituto de Biomedicina de Valencia, Spain
>Professor Bruno Lomonte, University of Costa Rica (ICP-UCR), Costa Rica
Topics and speakers
1. Constructing comprehensive venom proteome reference maps for integrative venomics – Juan J Calvete
2. Snake venomics based on MALDI-TOF-TOF mass spectrometry – Bruno Lomonte
3. Top-down venomics – An introduction to proteoform-resolved venom profiling – Daniel Petras
4. Integrating ‘omics’ and testing venom-related hypotheses – Nicholas Casewell
Provisional agenda:
10.00-10.35: Juan Calvete
10.40-11.20: Bruno Lomonte
11.25-12.00: Daniel Petras
12.00-13.00: Discussion
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00-14.35: Nicholas Casewell
14.40-17.00: Presentations by participants
17.00-17.30: General discussion
About organisers and speakers:
Juan J Calvete (jcalvete@ibv.csic.es) has a Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from Complutense University (Madrid, 1985) and is currently Research Professor of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and Head of the Structural and Functional Venomics Laboratory at the Instituto de Biomedicina de Valencia (http://www3.ibv.csic.es/index.php/es/investigacion/genomica/upr). His current research focuses on structural and functional proteomics of snake venoms, having developed mass spectrometry-based tool (“venomics” and “antivenomics”) for exploring the evolution, composition, interactions with antivenoms, and biotechnological applications of venoms and toxins. Since 2011, Dr. Calvete is President of the European Section of the International Society on Toxinology.Dr. Juan J. Calvete has served as first President of the Spanish Proteomics Society. Currently, he is member of the Congress & Communication Committe of the European Proteomics Association, Editorial Board Member of Toxicon, Journal of Venom Research, Toxin Reviews, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Proteomics (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-proteomics).
Bruno Lomonte (bruno.lomonte@ucr.ac.cr) is a Professor at the Instituto Clodomiro Picado, University of Costa Rica (ICP-UCR), and a member of the International Society on Toxinology (IST) since 1986. His research has focused on snake venoms, with particular interest on the myotoxic phospholipases A2 of viperids, as well as on antivenoms, antibodies, and diverse toxin inhibitors. Currently he is Coordinator of the Proteomics Laboratory at ICP-UCR, where a number of venomics studies on snake species from Central America and other regions have been performed in recent years.
Daniel Petras (daniel.petras@chem.tu-berlin.de) is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Roderich Süssmuth at the TU Berlin. During his biotechnology undergraduate studies at the Hochschule Darmstadt he spend one semester at the MRC in Cambridge and one year in the lab of Prof. Juan Calvete at the CSIC in Valencia working on the venomics and antivenomics analysis of African spitting cobras. Having developed a deep fascination for snake venomics, he continued working on venoms during his Master Thesis (2011) and later on at the TU Berlin, where his current research focuses on the discovery and understanding of novel pharmacologically active peptides, with an emphasis on innovative mass spectrometric screening techniques, including top-down proteomics.
Nicholas Casewell (Nicholas.casewell@lstmed.ac.uk) is a lecturer in the Alistair Reid Venom Research Unit at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and a UK Natural Environment Research Council Research Fellow. His research focuses on evolutionary aspects of snake venoms, including how toxins evolve, how venom variation is generated and what impact evolutionary processes have on the efficacy of antivenom therapy. To do so his research typically involves the generation and interrogation of molecular data (e.g. venom gland transcriptomes) and the application of contemporary molecular evolution methods, often supplemented by proteomic and/or functional approaches. Recently he co-led the first venomous snake genome project on the king cobra.