Title: Numerical approach to structure, folding, and aggregation of proteins*

Speaker: Chin-Kun Hu, Research fellow, Institute of Physics of Academia Sinica, Taipei

Time: August 18, 9:00am

Venue: 203, Haiyun Teaching Building

Abstract: The objective of statistical physics is to understand macroscopic behavior of a many-body system from the interactions of the constituents of that system. In the development of science, simple models have often been used to describe complex systems consisting of many components, e.g. the critical behavior of gas-liquid systems can be well described by the three dimensional Ising model and the Lennard-Jones system.  In this talk, I briefly review some results from simple models for structures, folding, and aggregation of proteins. The last problem is related to neurodegenerative diseases.

It is pointed out that in many cases, protein aggregation does not result from protein mis-folding. Some potential drugs from Chinese herb are found for Alzheimer's

disease.