Title:  Seeing is Believing - Microscopic View of Lipid Modulation of Protein Function Using Advanced Simulations
Abstract:  Cellular membranes constitute a key component in all living organisms, as a major platform for diverse, critical cellular processes, such as signaling, transport, and cell-cell communication. The depth of our understanding of the biology of the cell and physiology of multicellular organisms, therefore, hinges largely on our ability to describe the structure, dynamics, and function of biological membranes and their components (lipids and membrane proteins) at a detailed level. While modern experimental structural biological and biophysical techniques have substantially elevated our level of understanding, a large fraction of the molecular phenomena in biological systems are still inaccessible to experimental techniques. Computational methods, including molecular modeling and simulation, as well as enhanced sampling techniques and free energy calculations have transformed into indispensable biophysical tools in complementing experiment by offering an approach that simultaneously provides the spatial and temporal resolutions needed for detailed description of complex molecular phenomena. In this talk, I will describe an example in which lipid mediated protein communication is captured by molecular simulation.