High Energy Physics techniques applied to Highly Entangled Proteins

Speaker: Dick Blankenbecler

Date: Thursday, March 11, 2004
Time: 3:30 - 5:00 PM
Location: Orange Conference Room, Bldg 40
Goodies: Tea and cookies provided

Techniques and Algorithms developed originally in High Energy Physics have been applied to selected problems in genetics with interesting results. A brief review of the importance of protein structure from a biased physics point of view will be given.  Mean Field Techniques used in detector track fitting algorithms will be applied to the comparison of protein structures. The practical use of such comparisons will be discussed.  This application requires a complete knowledge of the 3-D structure of proteins but unfortunately not all proteins can be crystallized to allow a standard measurement. As previously  proposed, the possibility of measuring the charge structure of "single" isolated molecules using the proposed SLAC Free Electron Laser will be outlined. This involves determining the orientation of each molecule, and performing an inverse fourier transform when only the magnitude of the transform is known. Two different algorithms for accomplishing this step will be discussed.

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Dick Blankenbecler is a former SLAC theoretical physicist who now contemplates life's persistent questions from Nevada's high desert country.