On May 14-15, Alice, Libby and Slyvia travelled down to the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences at Imperial College London to attend the LUMICKS single-molecule research symposium. The two days consisted of a variety of wonderful talks, highlighting the importance of single-molecule techniques in biophysical research.

During the symposium, Alice gave an exciting talk entitled “Single molecule insights into how DNA supercoiling affects its interactions”, which was incredibly well received. In addition, Libby and Sylvia both gave flash talks and poster presentations talking about their current research during their PhD’s.

Alice giving her talk during the second day of the symposium.

The keynote speakers, Nynke Dekker and Simon Boulton both gave exceptionally stimulating talks on their research careers. As a PhD student, it was incredibly inspiring and motivating to watch. Two talk highlights were Lori Passmore who gave a talk on “insights into how the FANCD2-FANCI DNA repair clamp interacts with DNA” and Graeme King for “Probing the structure and interactions of negatively supercoiled DNA using optical tweezers and fluorescence imaging”. As a lab who’s main focus is singe-molecule imaging of DNA-protein interactions in solution, and the automation of analysis of these complexes, both these talks were very insightful into this field.

Thank you to David Rueda and Mina Brett-Pitt for organising this wonderful event!