IAS Workshops/Conferences:
New Trends in Biomolecular Modeling: from Protein Folding to DNA Compaction
15-16 March 2007
Nanyang Executive Centre (NTU)
Lecture Room 1
Speakers include
Professor Kerson Huang
Professor of Physics Emeritus, MIT and other distinguished scientists in the area of protein folding.
One of the objectives of this workshop is to introduce the background, philosophy, and implementation of a stochastic approach to protein folding, as embodied in CSAW (conditioned self-avoiding walk), a model recently proposed by Professor Kerson Huang.
A protein is a chain molecule made up of a sequence of amino acids, which can be chosen from a pool of 20. Some of these are insoluble in water, or "hydrophobic". In a living cell, which is mainly water, the chain curls up (folds) to shield the hydrophobic units from water. The final "native" shape is a balance among conflicting demands of the hydrophobic effect and other interactions. Current methods to study this process fall roughly into two categories: (1) Bioinformatics, in which one tries to cull empirical rules from the database of known proteins. It does not deal with dynamics. (2) Stochastic processes like conditioned self avoiding random walks and molecular dynamics, in which one calculates the coordinates of all the atoms plus surrounding water molecules.
The CSAW model simulates the Brownian Motion of a chain molecule, condistioned by effects such as the hydrophobic effect and hydrogen-bonding. The workshop will cover physical and mathematical background, computer simulations, and possible applications.
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