This award by the Biomaterials program in the Division of Materials Research is in support of a workshop titled "The Physics of Protein Self-Assembly" to be held in June, 2015 at the Centre Europeen de Calcul Atomique et Moleculaire (CECAM) in Lausanne, Switzerland. This award is cofunded by the Condensed Matter Physics program in the Division of Materials Research; the Biomedical Engineering program in the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (ENG); and the Global Venture Fund program in the Section of International Science and Engineering (OD/IIA). This workshop would provide opportunity to bring together scientists working in theory, computation, and experiments from both colloidal and protein communities, and share their recent ideas and approaches for gaining insights into the protein self-assembly. Knowledge gained from this workshop would be important in developing an understanding of many biophysical phenomena, and would have impact on many industrial processes that rely on bottom-up protein assembly. The participants of the workshop include junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students in addition to well established investigators. The workshop includes oral presentations, discussion groups, and poster sessions. In addition, the size, structure and format of the workshop would facilitate networking and developing future collaborations.
The self-assembly of proteins into membranes, fibrils, crystals, clusters and gels is of keen biological and material interest. This workshop will explore the following themes: 1) Experimental systems of protein self-assembly in globular proteins, viruses and amyloids, and the role of anisotropy in these experimental systems, and to identify protein assembly experiments to improve microscopic understanding and schematic models; 2) Coarse-grained and atomistic simulations of protein self-assembly, how well these simulations work for proteins in their current form, how can they be refined and adapted to achieve better predictability, and how atomistic simulation complement and inform coarse-grained descriptions; and 3) Synthetic patchy colloids as models for protein self-assembly, to what extent the current patchy particles mimic protein self-assembly, and what level of complexity in synthetic anisotropic colloids is required to effectively mimic protein self-assembly. The proposed workshop is expected to stimulate the development of unifying physical descriptions that will advance understanding of protein self-assembly. Identifying the physical forces behind the spontaneous assembly of these condensed phases is important in elucidating normal protein function, and in designing novel biomaterials with enhanced functional properties and applications.
