Notice Board

The Alberta RNA Research and Training Institute presents Dr. Borries Demeler from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.  Dr. Demeler is the Director of the Center for Analytical Ultracentrifugation of Macromolecular Assembliesn the Director of the Center for Light Scattering, and the Director of the Bioinformatics Core Facility.  His talk is titled "Measuring Interactions in the Solution Phase: Adding a Spectral Dimension to Analytical Ultracentrifugation." The ARRTI Speaker Series is open to the public and was established to bring leading researchers to the University of Lethbridge for lectures on a broad range of topics relating to RNA research. All are welcome! 

Abstract:

Ever since Svedberg's Nobel prize, Analytical Ultracentrifugation (AUC) has been regarded as the gold standard for first-principle solution-based interaction analysis. With the arrival of the latest detector technology, an entirely new class of experiments has become possible. Multi-wavelength detection adds an orthogonal spectral dimension to the hydrodynamic characterization of solutes, allowing components with distinct absorbance spectra to be identified based on their optical properties. In this talk I will describe novel insights gained from this new technology and discuss examples involving spectral separation of protein-nucleic acid interactions, determination of stoichiometry of West Nile virus RNA interactions with host cell proteins, and the elucidation of quantum gap spectra and reaction mechanisms of CdTe quantum dots.