Unveiling muscle myosin super-relaxation and its energetic power.

Abstract: After years of intense research using structural, biological, and biochemical approaches, it is clear that myosin is essential for cardiac and skeletal muscle contractility. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg of this protein’s functions. In the present talk, its newly discovered biochemical state (named super-relaxed state) will be presented. Focus will be placed on its influence on ATP consumption, its physiological regulation (during seasonal metabolic suppression such as hibernation) and pathological maladaptation (in diabetes and cardiomyopathies).
Brief bio: Originally trained in France, Julien Ochala earned his PhD in Muscle Cell Biology from the Université de Bourgogne in 2007. He then undertook postdoctoral research at Uppsala University (Sweden), before establishing himself as a principal investigator first at King’s College London, UK (in 2013), then at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark (in 2020). Julien is now an Associate Professor there with a research group focusing on contractile proteins of cardiac and skeletal muscle (especially myosin). His work uses human tissue and animal models together with a portfolio of techniques ranging from single molecule assays or X-ray diffraction to whole muscle physiology.