YPIC Challenge 2.0: ¿Podrías descifrar una frase escondida en E. coli antes del congreso de Santiago?

Have you ever wondered whether you can express an English sentence in Escherichia coli? No? Well, you are probably not the only one… Yet, intrigued as we are by the complexity and limits of life, the Young Proteomics Investigators Club (YPIC) went ahead and tried this inciting idea, with the help of PolyQuant. And guess what?! E. coli does speak English and has blessed this world with the first-ever three-dimensional grammar.

Why? Because we like challenges and we believe, you do too. Therefore, we dare you to join us in studying this unique protein, assembled by this fascinating creature with the sole purpose of challenging you.

 Welcome to the second YPIC Challenge.

Why would you participate? Well, because

1. You are one of the few on this planet who can actually crack this code, since advanced proteomics skills are of the utmost importance.
2. Because you want to become the pride of your country. Not to mention how proud your mom will be when you win this challenge!
3. Because we have a separate competition for every discipline and expert in proteomics:
   1. Three-dimensional Grammar (find out how this sentence folds)
   2. Bioinformazing (develop the coolest bioinformatics approach to decipher the sentence)
   3. Protein Punctuation (Look for the biological equivalent of punctuation: PTMs left behind by E. coli)
   4. #Bioreactivity (can you generate and describe bioreactivity in this Twitter-sized message?)
   5. Best manuscript, the main prize
4. A manuscript you say? Indeed, following your experimental wizardry, you should consolidate your beautiful work by writing a manuscript. The deeper we can drill into the mysteries of the biology of language, the higher the impact factor of the journal that dedicates an entire issue to our joint effort. So, an extra, official publication for just playing a game? That doesn’t sound too bad now, does it?

At EuPA2018 in June, Santiago de Compostella, we will award the prizes. The winning team (best manuscript) will receive a travel grant to any EuPA conference or workshop, so that is a cheap conference to top it off!We can actually feel your index finger hoovering over the mouse to register. Don’t hesitate; we didn’t either, did we? And neither did PolyQuant, who took the risk of finding out that life not only speaks Latin or Greek, but also likes English! The only thing you need to do is become a YPIC member for free (as is the challenge obviously) and gather three chosen ones in a well-considered research team. Trust us; you will need them! Last year’s challenge, 19 teams enlisted and only 7 cracked the code. And that one seemed easy: just 19 synthetic peptides together forming a sentence from a book. Just ask last year’s winners Alexander Hogrebe and Rosa R. Jersie-Christensen (Jesper V. Olsen’s group) how easy that was*. And this year, we cranked it up a notch. That means that you will not find the sentence anywhere and there probably will be some digestion involved (unless you do top down, Edmann Degradation or – hey, why not – nano pore sequencing?).

Getting suspicious about all this costless awesomeness? Don’t! Look at it from our perspective: we get to extend our membership and, in doing so, your network. That is only one of the reasons that EuPA founded us at EuPA2016 in Istanbul. Actually, we want to represent all the extra-scientific aspects of being a young scientist. Just check out our survey and you will start to get the picture. A digital Proteomics job fair made by EuBIC is already in place (http://jobs.proteomics-academy.org), but there are countless other things we could do for you in the future.

Be sure to check-out our Facebook page if you want regular updates on our activities as well.

See you at EuPA2018, with all the contenders.

The new generation of science has arrived! Power to the Proteomics people,

Sincerely,

The YPIC