It is our pleasure to invite you to attend the FEBS lecture and practical course on Fundamental techniques in mammalian cell biology which is hosted at National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” in Kyiv, Ukraine.

The advances in cell and molecular biology have brought to light a whole range of modern and highly sophisticated technologies, including Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), DNA microarrays, mass spectrometry coupled to Proteomics etc. To keep researchers up to date, workshops, lecture and practical courses on these methodologies have been organized by various funding bodies in the last decade. Without doubt, they have been highly popular and allowed young scientists to gain both theoretical and hands-on experience in modern techniques. However, the application of modern high-tech methodologies is dependent in most cases on the use of basic biochemical, cell and molecular biology techniques, such as maintaining and culturing prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, molecular cloning, expression and purification of recombinant proteins, immunoprecipitation and Western blotting, in vitro enzymatic assays etc. Young researchers and PhD students who do not have a good grasp of these fundamental technologies can not fully appreciate research publications on the use of more advanced methodologies and therefore would find it difficult to apply them adequately in their research projects. The FEBS lecture and practical course “Fundamental techniques in mammalian cell biology” is aimed to cover the range of basic cell biology techniques. If you would like to gain the experience or to advance your  skills, we look forward to meeting you in Kyiv.

Prof. Ivan Gout

Course organizer

Duration of the FEBS COURSE

Dates of Course: Sun 25 January – Sun 1 February 2009

Number of working days: 6

Deadline for applications: 20 November 2008

The main objective of this course is to provide young researchers in biosciences with a theoretical and experimental tutorial framework enabling them to gain experience in mammalian cell biology, inducing or knocking down the expression of cellular proteins, performing in vitro biochemical assays, examining subcellular localization by immunofluorescent microscopy etc. Within these general objectives specific goals will be pursued, such as:

• maintenance and manipulation of mammalian cells under various experimental conditions mitogenic stimulation, exposure to cellular stresses and major signal transduction inhibitors;
• transient transfection and generation of stable cell lines, expressing wild type and mutant proteins;
• knocking down the expression of cellular proteins by using specific siRNAs;
• immunoprecipitation of exogenously expressed proteins and their analysis by biochemical techniques, such as Western blotting, in vitro kinase assay, analysis of post-translational modifications with site-directed antibodies;
• immunofluorescent analysis of subcellular localization of transiently and stably expressed proteins.

The proposed objectives will be covered in a set of lectures, tutorials and practical sessions, which are outlined in details in the scientific programme.