12:00
Copolymer templating from a mathematical and physical perspective
Thomas is a Reader in Biomolecular Systems in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College. He leads the "Principles of Biomolecular Systems" group. 'His group probes the fundamental principles underlying complex biochemical systems through theoretical modelling, simulation and experiment.' (Taken from his website: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/principles-of-biomolecular-systems/)
You can also learn more about their work via their blog here
Abstract
Biological systems achieve their complexity by processing and exploiting information stored in molecular copolymers such as DNA, RNA and proteins. Despite the ubiquity and power of this approach in natural systems, our ability to implement similar functionality in synthetic systems is very limited. In this talk, we will first outline a new mathematical framework for analysing general models of colymerisation for infinitely long polymers. For a given model of copolymerisation, this approach allows for the extraction of key quantities such as the sequence distribution, speed of polymerisation and the rate of molecular fuel consumption without resorting to simulation. Subsequently, we will explore mechanisms that allow for reliable copying of the information stored in finite-length template copolymers, before touching on recent experimental work in which these ideas are put into practice.