This talk is intended to be a pedestrian introduction to theoretical physics of proteins.
We first give a very general introduction to proteins, and their structure. We describe
why the protein folding problem is so important. We explain the general structure of
proteins as string-like configurations and propose that the protein folding problem falls
in the general category with strings. We analyze the extrinsic geometry of string-like structures
and argue - on general grounds - that the energy function coincides with that of Abelian
Higgs Model with spontaneously broken symmetry. The discrete version of the energy
function is shown to support topological solitons, and these solitons are interpreted in terms
of string geometry. Finally, it is shown that solitons are common in all biologically active
proteins: Each of us is made out of some 10^20 topological solitons.
NIEMI, ANTTI: obtained PhD in theoretical particle physics at MIT in 1983. Since then postdoc at Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton 1983-1985, Assistant Professor of Physics at Ohio State University and also Assistant Specialist/Visiting Professor at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 1985-1988. During 1989 Scientific Associate at CERN Theory Division. 1990-1992 Group Leader at Research Institute for Theoretical Physics at Helsinki University and 1991-1992 Director, Institute of Particle Physics at Helsinki University of Technology. Since 1992 Chaired Professor of Theoretical Physics at Uppsala University. During 2003-2008 Chang Jiang professor at Chern Institute of Mathematics in Nankai, China. From 2005 Directeur de Recherche at CNRS (LMPT-Tours). From 2012 Qian Ren professor at Beijing Institute of Technology, China. Recipient of Outstanding Junior Investigator Grant (US DOE) in 1986, Goran Gustafsson Prize in 1994. Member of Finnish Society of Sciences and Letter and Royal Society of Science (Sweden). Advisor of 20 completed PhD students. Around 140 publications in refereed journals. He currently works on structural and dynamical aspects of protein folding. |
