Seminar “Near equilibrium fluctuations of single protein molecules”
Date
Thursday, 11st November 2010
Time
12:00 am
Place
University of Barcelona
Faculty of Physics Building
Room 3.20, 3rd floor
Speaker
Dr Matthias Rief, Technische Universitat Muenchen (Germany)
Abstract
Single molecule mechanical experiments allow the observation of protein fluctuations over extended periods. In my talk I will show how the full free energy landscape of a single molecule of the GCN4 leucine zipper can be extracted using dual beam optical tweezers. To this end, we employed deconvolution force spectroscopy to follow an individual molecule’s trajectory with high temporal and spatial resolution. We find a heterogeneous energy landscape of the GCN4 leucine zipper domain. The energy profile is divided into two stable C-terminal heptad repeats and two less stable repeats at the N-terminus. Energies and transition barrier positions were confirmed by single molecule kinetic analysis.
