Sameer Varma, Ph.D. candidate in Biophysics and Computational Biology at UIUC, will speak to the seminar on April 1. Varma has research interests in grid-based scientific computing and theoretical calculations of pH-dependent proton dissociation probabilities (pKa).

Biography:
Sameer Varma received his BS and MS degrees in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1999. He is currently pursuing his PhD entitled "Protonation and Membrane Protein Function" in Biophysics and Computational Biology under the guidance of Prof. E. Jakobsson.

Title:
Structure-Function Relationships in Membrane Proteins.

Abstract:
Science may be defined as an attempt to find ever more fundamental laws and to reconstruct the long chains of causes from these foundations up to the full range of natural events. In adding its links to the chain, each scientific discipline adopts a certain phenomenon to work on at a given level of complexity and develops "fundamental" rules that can be considered a satisfactory explanation of what is seen at that level. These fundamental rules, however, to another scientific discipline might be considered a yet another complex phenomenon needing explanation. This has ever since been the trend in scientific endeavor and the science of biological molecules is no exception. This trend in the science of biological molecules would be presented in the context of our investigations of the structure-function relationships of two membrane proteins a membrane-spanning pore forming protein (OmpF) found in the outer-membrane of some single-celled organisms, and a signal-transducing membrane docking protein (C2 domain of cPLA₂) found in most multi-cellular organisms. Such investigations of biological molecules have been made possible not only due to pioneering work in the field of structural biology which have provided us with atomic resolution data for biological molecules, but also due to the worldwide efforts in the field of computer science and engineering that have today provided us with enormous computer power to solve complex mathematical equations.