1. Biomolecular forces:
- chemical bonds, van der Waals, hydrogen bonding
- Ionic interactions
2. Introduction to polymers:
3. Protein folding:
- Entropy and elasticity
- Interactions and the coil-globule transition
- Simple lattice models of protein folding
- Random Energy Model for freezing
4. DNA and RNA:
- Role of hydrophobicity and other interactions
- Secondary structure elements: alpha-helices & beta-sheets
- Classification of protein structures, and their evolution
- Dynamics of fast folding
- Watson-Crick pairing
- Energy/entropy considerations, and DNA melting
- RNA secondary structures
- Hartree equation for obtaining secondary structures without pseudo-knots
Wednesday, February 23
L9: (MK) Electrostatic forces
Friday, February 25
L10 (LM via zoom) Forces in biology
Monday February 28
L11 (MK) polymer phases
Wednesday March 2
L12 (MK) Compact polymers and REM
Monday March 7
L13 (LM via zoom) protein folding energetics
Wednesday March 9
L14 (LM via zoom) protein folding kinetics
Monday March 14
L15 (MK) DNA
Wednesday March 16
L16 (MK) RNA