Professor Lynn Zechiedrich, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston TX USA presents thisInstitute for Mathematical Sciences Complexity Science Seminar.
Abstract: The familiar, elegant form of linear, double-stranded DNA is a state of DNA not found in cells. Instead, DNA is maintained in a higher-energy, globally underwound conformation surrounded by counterions and macromolecules, which contains no free ends. Transient waves of extreme DNA underwinding and overwinding are generated during normal cell functions. This presentation discusses dramatic non-linear DNA sequence-dependent alterations in structure in response to underwinding or overwinding that alter the counterion distributions and drive DNA replication, transcription, repair, and recombination.
For an introduction to underwinding and overwinding DNA, please see: 1. Fogg, J. M., Catanese, D. J., Jr., Randall, G. L., Swick, M. C., and Zechiedrich, L. (2009). Differences between positively and negatively supercoiled DNA that topoisomerases may distinguish. Proc. Institute Math. App. 150, 73-123 in Mathematics of DNA Structure, Function, and Interactions
(Benham, C.J., Harvey, S., Olson, W.K., De Witt L. Sumners, D.W.L., and Swigon, D., Eds.). 2. Liu, Z., Deibler, R. W., Chan, H. S., and Zechiedrich, L. (2009). The why and how of DNA unlinking. Nucleic Acids Res. 37, 661-671.
Biography: Lynn Zechiedrich is a tenured Associate Professor of Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Pharmacology with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Mathematics at Florida State University. A Zoology major (B.S.) with minors in Mathematics and Music, she earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Her postdoctoral fellowship was with the late Prof. Nick Cozzarelli at the University of California, Berkeley, CA where she studied DNA structure/function. The Zechiedrich Laboratory websitecan be found at: http://www.bcm.edu/labs/zechiedrich,
For more information contact Professor Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen, h.jensen@imperial.ac.uk.
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