Nucleic Acids Force and Structure

Detail:

Abstract
Biological functions of biomolecules are closely connected with their structures and the forces animating such structures. Physical understanding of biomolecular force and structure is thus critical to unraveling their biological roles.  We have a long-standing interest in how the force/structure-function relationships are manifested in the increasingly diverse lands of nucleic acids, whose biological roles are well beyond being the carrier of genetic information. In this talk, I will introduce our primary experimental technique of x-ray scattering and how it is used to measure nucleic acids force and structure, specifically in systems ranging from bare DNA in a test tube to tightly packaged genome in viruses and tohistone-regulated nucleosome arrays.

Introduction of the speaker:
Dr. Qiu received his BS in Physics and BE in Computer Science from University of Science and Technology of China in 1999；he received his Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics from Michigan State University in 2004; he worked as a postdoc associate at  Cornell University from 2004 to 2007; and as a research fellow at Lab of Physics & Structural Biology of NIH from 2007 to 2010. In 2010, he joined the Department of Physics of George Washington University as an assistant professor. Now he is an associate professor with tenure in George Washington University. His interest is to apply experimental techniques of physics to study the structure, function, and dynamics of biological molecules and supramolecular assemblies.