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What can we learn from computational cell models?
21 January 2022 @ 16:00 - 17:00
Aykut Erbaş
MSN Graduate Program and UNAM
There are over 40 million cells in our body. Despite carrying an identical genome, these cells are specialized into 200 different types to undertake particular biological tasks in various tissues. The main factor determining a cell’s biological identity is the type and amount of cell-specific proteins. In turn, these cell-specific proteins somewhat determine how, when, where, and which part of genetic information encoded in our DNA will be read to sustain the dynamic complexity of cellular activity. One of the questions that we ask in our research group: can we use minimal computational models to reveal certain parts of this complexity? By considering the kinetics and organizational properties of DNA-binding proteins, in this talk, I will present a couple of examples to convince you that computer simulations can be used, along with biomolecular experiments, to elucidate the dynamic and organizational properties of the genome. Together we will see that well-designed molecular models can replicate experimental findings and encourage us to reconsider even re-write certain parts of our text-books.
About Speaker
Dr. Aykut Erbaş completed his Ph.D. in Physics at Technical University Munich (TUM), Germany, in 2011. His Ph.D. thesis contributed to the understanding of biomolecular mobility, specifically, of disordered protein structures. Later he moved to the Chemistry Department at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill to research polymer dynamics. Between 2014 and 2018, Dr. Erbas was a research fellow at the Material Science & Engineering Department at Northwestern University under various centers dedicated to designing bio-inspired energy systems. He also researched the interaction kinetics of biomolecular systems and molecular self-assembly in collaboration with Northwestern Biomolecular Sciences and Chemistry Departments. Dr. Erbas has been actively working on various soft-matter systems in close collaboration with experimental and engineering groups. He is currently interested in the kinetics aspects of protein-DNA interactions and 3d genome organization in his lab. Dr. Erbas has been an assistant professor at UNAM since September 2018
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