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TITLE:
Quantum Dynamics and Chemical Reactions in Enzymes - A Really Complex Condensed Phase or a Quantum Machine
SPEAKER:
Professor Steven D. Schwartz,
TIME: Thursday Apr. 14, 2005 at 4 PM
PLACE: George P. Williams, Jr. Lecture Hall, (Olin 101)
Depts. of Biophysics and Biochemistry
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY
This seminar will describe ongoing research on the nature of chemical reactions in enzymes. Classical dogma teaches that enzymes lower the free energy barrier to reaction. We will investigate if this is necessarily so, if there are other ways to catalyze chemical reactions, and how protein dynamics can couple to chemical reaction. The work proceeds through quantum theories of chemical reaction in condensed phase to studies of how the symmetry of couple vibrational modes differentially affects reaction dynamics. Specific examples will include a variety of condensed phase chemical reactions (liquid and crystalline) and a variety of enzymatically catalyzed reactions including the reactions of alcohol dehydrogenase, lactate dehydrogenase, and purine nucleoside phosphorylase.