Levich Institute Seminar Announcement, 10/02/2007

Tuesday, 10/02/2007
2:00 PM
Steinman Hall, Room #312
(Chemical Engineering Conference Room)

Professor Themis Lazaridis
City College of CUNY
Department of Chemistry

"Implicit Solvent Modeling of Peptide-Membrane Interactions"

ABSTRACT

Implicit solvation models have generated a lot of interest thanks to their convenience and speed. With minimal effort these models can be extended to lipid membranes with even greater payoffs. We recently extended the EEF1 function for soluble proteins to an implicit membrane model (IMM1) by making the solvation parameters and the dielectric screening dependent on the vertical coordinate. The membrane surface charge is modeled by use of the Gouy-Chapman theory. The transmembrane voltage is also straightforward to incorporate. We have developed approaches for calculating absolute, pH-dependent membrane binding free energies and transmembrane helix association free energies. We have applied these methods to a number of membrane-active peptides: the influenza hemagglutinin fusion peptide, alamethicin, the membrane targeting domain of phosphocholine cytidylyltransferase, and alpha-synuclein.

BRIEF ACADEMIC/EMPLOYMENT BACKGROUND

  • PhD in Chemical Engineering University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, September 1992 Dissertation: "Theoretical and computational studies of hydration and conformational transitions" Advisor: Michael E. Paulaitis Minor: Physical Chemistry
  • Diploma in Chemical Engineering Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece, July 1987 Diploma Thesis: "Modeling and on-line optimizing control of bioreactors" Advisor: C. Kyparissides Minor: Biology
  • Associate Professor (January 2004-) Department of Chemistry, City College of New York
  • Assistant Professor (September 1998-December 2003) Department of Chemistry, City College of New York
  • Research Associate (1992-1998) Department of Chemistry, Harvard University, Group of M. Karplus
  • Research Assistant (September 1987-August 1992) Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Delaware
  • Teaching Assistant Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Delaware (Fall 1988) Department of Chemistry, Harvard University (Fall 1995,1996,1997)


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