William A. Eaton Seminar

Single Molecule Fluorescence Experiments on Protein Folding and their Connection to an Ising-like Model and the All-Atom Molecular Dynamics Simulations Using the Hard-Wired Computer "Anton"

Dr. William A. Eaton, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda (http://irp.nih.gov/pi/william-eaton)

William Eaton has studied both normal and abnormal haemoglobins. He discovered the highly unusual aggregation kinetics of sickle cell haemoglobin to form fibers that are responsible for the pathology of the disease. He explained these with a novel nucleation mechanism, and showed how the kinetics are critical for determining the severity of the disease.  Eaton has also contributed significantly to understanding the mechanism of cooperative oxygen binding to normal haemoglobin by using nanosecond-resolved optical spectroscopy and single crystal oxygen binding measurements. His work in this area settled long standing controversies on the applicability of allosteric models and the stereochemical mechanism of M.F. Perutz.

In the early 1990’s Eaton introduced optical triggering methods with nanosecond lasers to dramatically improve time resolution in kinetic studies of protein folding, providing the first glimpse of the dynamics of helix and beta-sheet formation, intramolecular contact formation, and global collapse of polypeptide chains. From this work he proposed a “speed limit” for protein folding, a concept that motivated the search by him and others for proteins that fold in microseconds or less. More recently, Eaton has used single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy in protein folding to measure and interpret the trajectories of photons emitted by individual proteins undergoing folding and unfolding transitions. Throughout his work on protein folding Eaton’s experiments have been closely tied to theory, culminating in his development of a simple statistical mechanical model for protein folding.

 Bio-sketch:

William Eaton was born and educated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, earning a B.A. degree in Chemistry in 1959, an M.D. degree in 1964, and a Ph.D. degree in Molecular Biology in 1967, all at the University of Pennsylvania.  Eaton is the Chief of the Laboratory of Chemical Physics at the National Institute of Health. His awards include the Hillebrand Prize of the Chemical Society of Washington, the Founder’s Award of the Biophysical Society, the Neurath Award of the Protein Society, and the John Scott Award of the City of Philadelphia. Eaton is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Biophysical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Association of American Physicians and the National Academy of Sciences.

Note: If you would like to meet the speaker in person, contact Canan ATILGAN (canan@sabanciuniv.edu) before the seminar date.

September 8, 2014 – 11:00 Monday, FENS G029