---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kerry P Forristall <kerryf(a)mit.edu>
Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 9:20 AM
Subject: [Biophysics-Seminar] Today: MIT Physics Colloquium: Arup
Chakraborty
To: "biophysics-seminar(a)mit.edu" <biophysics-seminar(a)mit.edu>
*The David and Edith Harris Physics Colloquium Series*
*Thursday, 4/30/15 in room 10-250*
Arup Chakraborty
MIT
"Bringing Together Physics, Biology, and Medicine to Hit HIV Where It Hurts"
HIV is a highly mutable virus, which evades natural and vaccine-induced
immune responses and is the causative agent for the AIDS epidemic. I will
describe methods, rooted in statistical physics, which aim to determine the
fitness landscape of HIV – i.e., a definition of the collective sets of
mutations that allow the virus to maintain fitness and evade immunity, and
those combinations of mutations that cripple it. The “Hamiltonian” that
describes this fitness landscape is analogous to the Hopfield Hamiltonian
for associative memory in neural networks. I will show how this
Hamiltonian reveals encoded “memories” in the HIV population of
host-pathogen riposte won by the virus, and scaling laws that describe this
phenomenon. I will also present how evolutionary dynamics with our
inferred fitness landscape can predict HIV evolution in individual
patients, and how we have harnessed this knowledge, along with other
experimental tests, to design a therapeutic vaccine against HIV which is
being advanced to pre-clinical trials.
Time: 4:00pm
Place: 10-250
Refreshments at 3:30pm in 4-349 (Pappalardo Community Room)
Physics Colloquia Schedule:
http://web.mit.edu/physics/events/colloquia.html
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__web.mit.edu_physics_events_colloquia.html&d=BQMFAg&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=Nag7FAZF222m7nY-JYl1bJyk44Ms7RJSzJ_X3UF_q7c&m=QzUjuPqjEw7X8I-Hbn6bYvPbaOCQl87o5y17Ta1eqn4&s=gVwEqUHMvh3Owz92ioq6SHMs0y1cxDQKcLrWkCWHQbk&e=>
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********************************************
Semion K. Saikin, PhD
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Harvard University
12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
email: saykin(a)fas.harvard.edu
phone: (619)212-6649
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