Share
Josef Houser has been leading the Core Facility of Biomolecular Interactions and Crystallization (also known as BIC) at CEITEC MU since June 2022. Biomolecular interaction analysis, as performed by Josef Houser and his team, seeks to describe the interactions between biomolecules and understand the outcome of these interactions. This type of analysis is critical for medical research and pharmaceuticals. Thanks to the equipment, users can perform basic characterization of the physical properties of various molecules. In addition, the core facility is equipped with the instrumentation to set up crystallization conditions of biomolecules and their complexes.
Interview with Josef Houser
What are your main duties as a core facility head?
The main task of the head of the core facility is to ensure that our users, scientists and students, have the best possible conditions for running their experiments and getting useful data. This involves care of instruments and core facility staff, training new users but also discussions of the individual problems.
What type of services does your CF provide to the users? Who are typical users of your facility? And what are their needs?
CF BIC harbours 25 individual instruments to characterize biomacromolecules, analyse their interactions, and set up crystallization experiments. While some of them are operated by CF staff that performs the experiments, the majority is operated by users themselves. There is a broad spectrum of our users, from bachelor students to senior scientists, focused on various domains of life sciences: structural biologists, plant biologists, biochemists, pharmacologists, and others. Our expertise covers a broad range of technologies, so they are coming up with various questions; sometimes as simple as "Is my protein aggregated?", sometimes as complex as "Which of dozens of compounds would serve as a potential inhibitor for my receptor?"
Why are biomolecular interactions important?
Biomolecular interactions are everywhere. There would be no life without them. Everything we do, see, feel or think, everything that grows or is trying to kill us, is related to biomolecular interactions. That is why so many scientists are interested in them and this is why our core facility exists.
Why should researchers use your core facility? What is the added value of your core facility?
The main benefit that we can offer is the complexity of our services. While many laboratories have one or a few instruments to characterize biomolecules, in our facility, researchers can perform several different analyses in one place using state of the art instrumentation. This saves time and precious material. However, the crucial point behind all this is the people. CF staff helps users with designing the experiments, interpreting the data and finding solutions for their challenging tasks.
What is the most precious equipment you have?
As we are focused on relatively affordable technologies, we do not possess any extremely expensive equipment. The price of our machines only infrequently goes over ten million CZK. But if I should name one instrument that we are proud of, it would be the analytical ultracentrifuge that allows for the characterization of biomolecular sample properties and interactions directly in solution. There are just a few such instruments in the Czech Republic and neighboring countries and as such, it has frequently been overbooked. Therefore, I am glad that we recently managed to acquire a second instrument with even better performance and we will be able to provide faster and more demanding services.
Does your team have any unique skill set that you can offer to your users?
I already mentioned earlier that the advantage of our facility is the combination of techniques in one place. This also reflects in the skills and mindset of CF members who are used to think in a broader context. Therefore, we can offer our users a complex approach and alternative ways to deal with their samples. On the other hand, we can also recommend them to use some other facility around, if that is a better choice for their particular problem. I believe that collaboration is more efficient than competition.
What do you consider the greatest challenge in the biomolecular interactions and crystallization field?
From my point of view, the biggest issue in our field is correct data interpretation. While it is relatively easy to get the data, it is much harder to interpret them without "wishful thinking", overinterpretation, and neglecting orthogonal techniques to confirm one's findings. We have spent a lot of effort teaching our users that the quality of the sample is as important as the correct measurement. It seems to work at least partially and I hope this will get only better in the future.
Is your core facility offering any training opportunities for your users? Which course would you recommend and why?
CF BIC organizes various kinds of training and participates in the teaching of several university courses. From countless individual trainings for machine operation, through dedicated workshops up to week-long intensive seminars. Among the others, I would like to mention the university course S2004 Methods for characterization of biomolecular interactions taught as a one-week block at the end of the autumn semester. It covers the whole range of techniques with lectures given by CF members that use the instruments every day and have a deep insight into both theoretical and practical aspects. While there are no more vacant places for the practical part of the course, students can still register for the theoretical part so they are welcome to take part.
What is your vision for your core facility for the next seven years? Do you have any concrete plans how to achieve it?
In the field of biophysics, new techniques emerge every year. It is hard to predict which one will become a reliable workhorse and which one will be forgotten. I hope that the financing of core facilities in the coming years will allow us to keep pace with the global trends. Our staff members are getting more experienced every year and therefore provide better services to the users. Also, the scientific community started to understand the importance of sample quality, which is another field we have expertise in. Therefore, in seven years I see BIC as an essential part of CEITEC facilities, which will be perceived as a natural first place to go when you want to do the biomolecular studies. We are on a good way now, so we must keep going.
About Josef Houser
Josef Houser studied biochemistry at the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University and in 2014 he acquired a PhD degree in biomolecular chemistry at the same university. During his PhD studies, he spent one semester at leading European glycoscience institute CERMAV in Grenoble (France). He spent 12 years as a researcher at the National Centre of Biomolecular Research (NCBR) and 9 years as a staff scientist at the Core Facility of Biomolecular Interactions. He is teaching bioinformatics and related subjects at the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University. In 2021 he became associate professor at Masaryk University. Since June 2022, he is the Head of Core Facility of Biomolecular Interactions (BIC) at CEITEC Masaryk University.
