Bioinformatics in Bergen 2023 Conference took place on 24-25 May at the Solstrand Hotel thanks to the financial support from the Trond Mohn Foundation.

The aim of the event was to create opportunities for networking and collaboration among all locally situated researchers that use bioinformatics in their work.

It was a privilege to have the key note speakers Marcus Weber (Zuse Institute Berlin), Selina Våge (Department of Biological Sciences, UiB) and Lukas Käll (KTH and SciLifeLab, Stockholm).

There were 27 speed talks, poster session and 3 hours workshop along with the discussions during the coffee breaks and the dinner.

We are pleased to announce that Lorensha Naidoo and Kira Höffler won the best poster and the best speed talk awards at BiB2023.

CBU leaders’ workshop took place at the Scandic City Bergen, May 15th. The focus was on grant application proposals, discussing computing resources for CBU, communication and visibility, and discussions in groups.

Alexey Nesterenko is our new Postdoctoral Fellow who has joined the CBU to contribute in simulating lipid membranes and carbohydrates, and to do biomacromolecular force field validation, under supervision of Markus Miettinen.

Alexey got his PhD in a field between computational chemistry and electrochemistry in 2014 at the Frumkin Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry (IPCE) under supervision of prof. Yu. Ermakov. After his PhD, Alexey had positions at Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology in Moscow State University, in Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, and finally in Federal Center of Brain Research and Neurotechnologies (all in Moscow).

During his PhD and after it, Alexey worked in a tight collaboration with the Laboratory of Bioelectrochemistry (Frumkin IPCE) where lipid membranes are studied with experimental, theoretical and computational methods. His PhD was focused on investigating the structure of electrical double layer at the lipid–water interface, which was done by assembling results of MD simulation and experimental results of cation adsorption measurements. He demonstrated how to compute accurately an adsorption constant and binding site density from MD simulation. Further he continued working with this lab analyzing lipid monolayer molecular structure and polycation adsorption on anionic lipid membranes.

In 2014–2022, Alexey worked in Laboratory of Molecular Basis of Embryogenesis (Shemyakin-Ovichinnikov IBCh) under supervision of prof. A. Zaraisky, where they studied and simulated pattern formation in early amphibian embryo using mathematical modeling with partial differential equations. He demonstrated there both experimentally and theoretically how difference in adsorption of growth factors onto heparin extracellular matrix could play role in pattern formation. At 2020–2023, he worked in mass-spectrometry data analysis in Institute of Fundamental Neuroscience (FCBRN) under guidance of prof. V. Belousov, where they obtain and analyze metabolomics and proteomics data in different experiments with rodent stroke and oxidative stress in eukaryotic

This week we received word that Eivind Valen has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant. Eivind has been leading the Valen group at the Computational Biology Unit at the University of Bergen for 9 years, where they are working towards solving questions surrounding regulation of gene expression. We are hugely proud of Eivind, and thrilled that he has received this well deserved grant!

Lennart is a guest researcher joining Reuter’s group who will work with us at CBU for 6 months. The goal of the project is to evaluate the ability of molecular mechanics force fields to model, through molecular simulations, the properties of peptide-bilayer systems observed from solid state NMR. The bulk of the work will be atomistic molecular dynamics simulations of 2 or 3 peptides and POPC lipid bilayers.