The next July 11 and 12, 2018 will take place The Second Julio Palacios International Symposium in the city of La Coruña, organized jointly by CSIC, the Ramón Areces Foundation and the University of La Coruña, oriented to biosciences
The Second Julio Palacios International Symposium is oriented toward biosciences from an experimental and theoretical viewpoint, since Julio Palacios Martínez (1891-1970) – a prestigious scientist and humanist from the Silver Period of the Spanish sciences - spent his last years doing research in medicine. This bio orientation will be common denominator of the talks from the invited speakers, looking for a synergy between chemistry, physics and mathematics, with medicine. We have selected experimental and theoretical scientists with international reputation. The Periodic Table involves a grandiose challenge when the number of atoms grows exponentially, as in the case of biomolecules, the ground of our own existence. The elements combine to form systems, whose evolution and interactions are extremely complex: viruses, bacteria, cells and organs. We are gradually unmasking the biological processes that rule our evolution, even controlling some of them to a certain extent. Physics and mathematics are gradually being incorporated into biosciences in a very interesting way, since in order to predict and decipher biological processes, apart from biomolecular structures, we also need to know how they interact with each other and what are the intrinsic forces that control the dynamics of a biological system. For instance, the frontiers defining biological sciences are diffuse, including disciplines such as biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology. In order to mention some unsolved problems: What is the folding mechanism of a protein? Can we predict the structure of a protein from the amino acid sequence? In the microscopic world, we can determine the evolution over time of a system of several particles by the Schrödinger equation as a function of time. However, this equation is not solvable for a biological system even with the most powerful computers. What is then the solution to the problems in biosciences? In order to answer this question we will need to design new models. Classical mechanics and dynamics describe the movement of macroscopic systems without asking about their internal structure. Quantum mechanics and dynamics are ruled by unintuitive laws which allow us to describe microscopic systems. The complexity of biological systems is challenging: we have very powerful tools developed in the fields of mathematics, physics and chemistry. We must also take into account computer science and information theory, as we will see throughout this symposium. However, we need to combine these disciplines further in order to develop new ideas that should allow us to define and solve problems such as the excited states in biomolecules, the interactions between biomolecules, understanding the aging process, predicting velocities in biochemical reactions catalyzed by enzymes, understanding how immunotherapy works, the structural transitions in peptides, and the intercellular signaling and cell movement in biological systems. The above points are just some aspects to be discussed in this symposium, whose enormous complexity shows the need to combine exact, physical and Natural sciences, both from a theoretical and experimental point of view. The multidisciplinarity, converging to bio matters will be the basis of the Second Julio Palacios International Symposium. More information on the web https://jpalacios.iqfr.csic.es/en/menu-actividades-eng/2-symposium-eng
