General Colloquium:
October 28, - 4:00pm Phys 223
(Coffee at 3:30p.m. in room 242)

Professor Stephen M. Durbin
Purdue University
Department of Physics

Title:"Using physics to get from protein structure to biological function: vibrational dynamics of myoglobin."

Abstract:
Protein crystallographers routinely dazzle us with new atomic structures of ever larger proteins and other biological macromolecules. These structures are opening whole new vistas in biology, but they still correspond to a "snapshot" of the protein average structure. To better understand how proteins perform their biological functions, motion is the key: you must know how they move. This colloquium will describe a new x-ray synchrotron technique based on nuclear Mossbauer resonant excitation to determine the vibrational dynamics of a simple heme protein, myoglobin. This provides a new view into the dynamics of proteins, and is providing new insights into the role of protein backbone motion in controlling biological behavior.