Course Description:

This course will introduce physical techniques commonly used for macromolecular characterization. An emphasis will be placed on the physical principles that underlie each technique. This course has been developed jointly by Nick Hud and Loren Williams

List of Topics:

• structure, conformation, interactions and folding of biological macromolecules
• thermodynamic principles/titration and scanning calorimetry
• sedimentation,
• electrophoresis
• mass spectrometry
• nmr
• epr
• x-ray diffraction
• light scattering
• uv/vis absorption
• cicular dichroism
• emission
• osmotic stress/molecular crowding
• equilibrium dialysis
• single molecule techniques

Instructor:

Dr. Loren Williams, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Office, 1309 IBB; email, loren.Williams@chemistry.gatech.edu. All email must contain the course number (6582) and student name in the subject line.

Course Time/Place:

10 am - 11 am, Room 53, College of Computing.

Office Hours:

by appointment.

Textbook:

Principles of Physical Biochemistry, Kensal van Holde, W. Curtis Johnson, and P. Shing Ho, Prentice-Hall (ISBN 0-13-720459-0).

Computing and Software Requirements:

• PC, linux box or mac
• a spreadsheet
• a freeware visualization program such as rasmol, located here, or swisspdbviewer, located here.
• the freeware program gnuplot, located here.

Grades:

Grades will be based on three exams (20% each), quizzes and assignments (15%), class participation (10%) and a written/oral oral report (15%). Exams and quizzes will cover assigned reading and class discussions.

Schedule:

A detailed schedule is posted here

Written/Oral Report:

Your report will be based on one or more articles that you select (Instructor approved) from the journals XXX. Each student must send email to the instructor by February 6 with (1) subject line: "name, chem 6582, report topic", (2) email body: article citation.