Abstract

May 22, 2006

Title: Prospects for a Purely Computational Biology
Presented by: Michael Colvin, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, University of California, Merced

 

Video Podcast

Abstract

The past half-century has seen amazing progress in the elucidation of the fundamental processes underlying biological function. One consequence of this new understanding is that a growing number of biological processes can, in principle, be simulated. However, the predictive modeling of biological systems still presents many challenges. For example, at the molecular level, many biochemical reactions are catalyzed by enzymes for which the structures are unknown, and most involve complex chemical mechanisms and subtle reaction energetics. At the cellular and organismal levels, there is still much that is terra incognita, ranging from unknown biochemical components to unknown principles of biological function. Despite these challenges, biology is rapidly becoming an information science, with computations playing a growing role in all forms of biological research. In this talk I will describe some examples of the promises and challenges for computational biology using examples from my own research, including first principles quantum chemical simulations of anticancer drugs, classical molecular dynamics simulations of the nuclear pore complex, and mathematical models of the growth and differentiation of stem cell populations.