Department of Physics

PHYS*4540 /7520 - W'10

MOLECULAR BIOPHYSICS

Lecturer:         Vladimir Ladizhansky, MacN 324, x53989
Email:            vladimir@physics.uoguelph.ca

Lectures:           Tuesday/Thursday                11:30-12:50             MacN101

Medical Certificate: Not generally required! However, if you miss your presentation, you should get a note from your College Counselor.

Protein structure. Nucleic acids structure. Factors determining protein and nucleic acid structures. Protein Stability. Biomembranes.
Membrane proteins and their functions. Membrane transport. Evolution and Protein Folding. Human perspective: conformational diseases.

Various topics in structural biology and biophysics of proteins. (Students’ presentations)

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and high resolution structure determination in biomolecules.
Fundamentals of the NMR. Multidimensional FT NMR spectroscopy. Brief Introduction into NMR-based structure determination.

Spectral Assignments. Determination of structural constraints. NOE effect. Constraint-based calculation of structure.

Applications of NMR to various problems in structural biophysics. (Students' presentations)

Evaluation
Students will be asked to make two presentations. Students will have to write a research proposal based on one of their presentations.


Participation in discussions:              10%
Assignments:                                    30%
Presentations:                                   30%
Papers/Projects:                               30%



Textbooks

Lodish et al,“Molecular Cell Biology”5^th edition
Charles R. Cantor and Paul R. Schimmel: “Biophysical chemistry”  part I: The conformation of biological molecules.


Recommended literature
Thomas E. Creighton, “Proteins: Structure and Molecular Properties”
Karp,  “Cell and Molecular Biology”
 Voet and Voet,   “Biochemistry”
Stryer,        “Biochemistry”
Alberts, "Molecular Biology of the Cell"