Professor Nathan Baker
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics
Washington University
St. Louis, Missouri

Monday, October 14, 2002
3:00 pm (CT)
3269 Beckman Institute

Abstract

Elucidation of the electrostatic properties of biomolecules has become a standard practice in molecular biophysics. Foremost among the models used to evaluate the electrostatic potential is the Poisson-Boltzmann equation, however, existing solution methods have limited the scope of accurate calculations to relatively small biomolecular systems. Two new numerical techniques will be presented which enable the parallel solution of the Poisson-Boltzmann equation for supramolecular structures orders of magnitude larger in size than those accessible with traditional methods. As a demonstration of this methodology, electrostatic potentials have been calculated for large microtubule and ribosome structures. The results point to the likely role of electrostatics in a variety of activities of these structures

Tea and coffee will be served in R3151 Beckman Institute at 2:15pm.