Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

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DY: Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 46: Poster

DY 46.78: Poster

Thursday, March 30, 2006, 16:00–18:00, P1

A simple spin model for investigating molecular recognition — •Hans Behringer, Andreas Degenhard, and Friederike Schmid — Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld, D-33615 Bielefeld

Biological systems such as the immune system rely on the ability of biomolecules to specifically recognise each other. Molecular recognition can be viewed as the ability of a biomolecule to interact preferentially with a particular target molecule among a vast variety of different but chemically similar rival molecules. In this talk equilibrium aspects of molecular recognition are investigated using simple spin models for the recognition process of two rigid biomolecules consisting of different types of subunits. To this end, a two-stage approach is adopted. First the structure of the target molecule is fixed and learned by a probe molecule. This design step, which might be considered to mimic natural evolution, results in an ensemble of probe sequences. In a second step the recognition ability of the designed probe ensemble with respect to the chosen target sequence is tested by comparing the free energy of association with the previously fixed target structure and a different competing structure. Particular attention is paid to the appearance of mis-recognitions, and to the effect of additional constraints in the design step on the recognition ability of the designed probe ensemble. In addition, the influence of cooperative effects accompanying the association of the target biomolecule and the probe molecules is investigated.