TITLE: "Molecular modeling and protein structures"

SPEAKER: Professor Jeff Z. Y. Chen,

TIME: Thursday Nov. 21, 2002 at 4 PM

PLACE: George P. Williams, Jr. Lecture Hall, (Olin 101)

One of the most challenging tasks in computer simulations is to predict protein structures and to study the interaction between proteins based on the sequences of amino acids. The "energy landscape", i.e., the interaction potential energy as a function of the confirmations that a protein can adopt, can be characterized by a multitude of local minima separated by high-energy barriers. In this talk, I will describe our recent effort in using statistical-physics models to explain and observing some most comm only occurred structures in proteins.