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Instructor: Rebecca Berlow, 919-445-6980, rberlow@med.unc.edu

Meeting Dates/Times and Locations: November / Early December; MWF 11:00 AM; 3007 GMB Registration limited to 12 except with permission Course Director. (Recitation TBD).

Conformational thermodynamics of macromolecules: Understanding polymer

Thermodynamics of protein folding

  • Protein folding
  • Two-state protein folding
  • Differential Scanning Calorimetry
  • Effect of mutations on folding
  • Cold denaturation
  • Solvent-induced denaturation
  • Protein surface area
  • Protein stability
  • Helix-coil transition

Kinetics of chemical reactions

  • Chemical reactions: terminology, treatment, equilibrium
  • First-order chemical reactions
  • Second-order chemical reactions
  • Transition state theory
  • Enzyme kinetics
  • Diffusion-limited reactions
  • Relaxation to equilibrium
  • Consecutive reactions
  • Diffusion in the external field

Protein folding kinetics

  • Two-state folding kinetics
  • Stopped-flow fluorescence
  • Chevron plot
  • Tanford β-value
  • Three-state folding kinetics, nucleation
  • Timescales of protein motion
  • H/D exchange
  • Nucleation mechanism of protein folding

Stochastic processes

  • Markov Process
  • Random walk: Poisson Process
  • Brownian Motion: Langevin Equation
  • Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem
  • Fokker-Plack Equation