All right well it didn't turn out to be visual scribing so much as doodling, but here are a few highlights.

This first one is about Jim Paulson's talk. It is possible that I was particularly inspired by this talk because Jim was my postdoc advisor. Among other things the talk was about using nanoparticles to present carbohydrate ligands (red apples) in conjunction with an antigen (the peanut antigen in this case) to induce tolerance in mast cells. The reason for this is that the carbohydrate receptor, a Siglec, is an inhibitory receptor that dampens antigen-induced activation of the cells.

David Vocadlo talked about a system he designed to monitor glucocerebrosidase activity in lysosomes of live cells. Mutations in glucocerebrosidase are responsible for Gaucher's disease, and are a risk factor for Parkinson's disease. Chemical chaperones are used to help fold this enzyme, and David's probes can assess how well those chaperones are working. Active (ie. folded) enzyme cleaves off a fluorophore quencher (a really, really good one), causing lysosomes to light right up.

Finally, Laura Kiessling talked about a lectin called Intelectin-1 that was initially discovered in frogs but is found in all mammals, and has the capability of recognizing a furanose diol on the surface of many microbes, while totally ignoring mammalian glycans. Intelectin-1 therefore may have a role in immune surveillance.