SEMINAR @ SISSA, SBP, dott.ssa C. Poletto, 31 Jul at 11 hrs.

[Barbara Corzani]

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STATISTICAL AND BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR
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Dott. Chiara Poletto
(INFM - Università di Padova)

Title:
""Structural motifs of biopolymers"


Thu 31 July @ 11.00 a.m.

SISSA - Basement floor - room A

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Abstract:

Biomolecular structures are assemblies of emergent anisotropic building blocks, uniaxial helices and biaxial strands. Following a conceptually novel approach, proteins and DNA occupy a marginally compact phase of matter;
this phase stabilizes a range of shapes that can be obtained by sequence independent interactions. We present two different models for singularity free self-interactions for a tube. 
The first has an entropic origin and is a measure of the effective space available to the solvent. 
The second arises from solvophobic interactions and leads to an energy proportional to the contact surface between the tube and solvent particles. In addition to analytical calculations, we present the results of numerical simulations
in order to understand the role played by the discrete versus continuum descriptions of the system in determining the preferred conformation.