KFC/BFCH Biophysical Chemistry

Lecturers: Petr Jurečka
Lecture: 2 hours/week
Credits: 3
Summer semester
Form of course completion: exam

Thermodynamics in biochemistry, entropy, dissipative processes, driving forces and energy flow in organisms. Water and solutions as an environment for biochemical processes.
Organism as an opened system in a stationary state. Kinetics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, oscillatory reactions in complex systems, biorhythms, pharmacokinetics.
Proteins. Structure, stability, non-covalent interactions, hydrophobic effect and "fear of vacuum", Ramachandran plot, protein folding and the role of entropy, mechanisms of protein folding. Principles of enzyme catalysis. Protein – ligand and protein – inhibitor interactions, docking.
Lipids, membranes, surface tension, self-assembly, concentration gradients and membrane potentials, membrane proteins, transport through a membrane.
Nucleic acids, DNA forms, RNA stability and folding, ions and ionic strength. Interactions of DNA and RNA with proteins, molecular recognition.
Experimental methods for biomolecule studies. Spectroscopy, microscopy, cryo-electron microscopy, fluorescence, NMR, X-ray, mass spectrometry, calorimetry. Streghts and weaknesses of various methods.
Modelling biomolecules. Computer simulations, approaches, information obtainable through computer simulations. Combination of modeling and experiment.