Posted: Oct 08, 2010

BDBDB2 Workshop on biological diffusion and Brownian dynamics simulations in Heidelberg

(Nanowerk News) Following a very successful workshop on the simulation and experimental study of biomolecular diffusional processes in Heidelberg in 2007, a second workshop will take place on October 11-13, 2010, at the Studio, Villa Bosch. The workshop is jointly organized by scientists from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and UC San Diego.
In biological systems, macromolecules are constantly moving around by diffusion. How do the molecules find their binding partners? How do they fold to form a particular shape? How do they diffuse through the crowded environment of the cell interior? How does the presence of many diffusing macromolecules in a cell affect the function of individual molecules?
These are just some of the questions that are being pursued with the experimental and theoretical approaches that will be discussed at the workshop. Brownian dynamics is a computational technique that allows the diffusive motion of molecules to be simulated, and a particular focus of the meeting will be the discussion of current developments in this simulation methodology.
35 scientists, theoreticians and experimentalists, from Europe, Israel, and the US will gather in Heidelberg for BDBDB2. They will be joined by 15 participants in San Diego, California, via live videoconferencing.
The workshop is organized by Rebecca Wade and Paolo Mereghetti (Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS)) and Andy McCammon (UCSD), and is sponsored the BIOMS Center for Modelling and Simulation in the Biosciences, Heidelberg, the University of California, San Diego, the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP), San Diego, the National Biomedical Computation Resource (NCBR), San Diego, and HITS.
Source: Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies