TITLE: Simple yet predictive protein models

SPEAKER: Professor Nikolay V. Dokholyan,

TIME: Thursday Sept. 7, 2006 at 4:00 PM

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

The traditional approach to computational biophysics studies of molecular systems is brute force molecular dynamics simulations under conditions of interest. The disadvantages of this traditional approach are that the time and length scales accessible to computer simulations often do not reach biologically-relevant scales. An alternative approach, which we call intuitive modeling, is hypothesis-driven and is based on tailoring simplified protein models to the systems of interest. Using intuitive modeling, the length and time scales that are achievable using simplified protein models by far exceed those of the traditional molecular dynamics simulations. We will describe several recent studies that signify the predictive power of simplified protein models within the intuitive modeling approach.

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