[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Seminar: "Bacterial chromosomes for theoreticians (and experimentalists)"

Group: This afternoon there is a seminar that might be of interest to all the photosynthetic people. I added it to the calendar as well. Cesar Suckjoon Jun, Harvard "Bacterial chromosomes for theoreticians (and experimentalists)" Tue Mar 31 3pm – Tue Mar 31 4pm Lyman 425 Chromosomes are the cornerstone of fundamental processes of any cell, and harmony between their physical properties and biological functions is an evolutionary consequence. From physics point of view, understanding bacterial chromosomes is quite challenging because of the several lengthscales involved in the basic biological processes, which often interfere one another [e.g., the size and geometry of the cell, radius of gyration of the chromosome, persistence length, supercoiled plectonemes, density correlation length (or the blob size), Debye screening length, ...alas!]. In fact, many of the simple questions involving polymers in confinement still remain unsolved. The purpose of this talk is to illustrate the basic processes of chromosome segregation in bacteria as a theoretician, and introduce some of the open theoretical questions for theoreticians (and experimentalists!) -- Cesar A. Rodriguez-Rosario, Postdoctoral Fellow Harvard University Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Box#34 12 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA rodriguez(a)chemistry.harvard.edu