School of Chemical Sciences

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Klaus Schulten is a keynote speaker at the NVIDIA's 2010 GPU (graphics processing unit) Technology Conference on September 22. He is described as "one of the world's top computational biologists". Prof. Schulten will highlight the major discoveries made using the computational microscope and also describe his research on cell disruption and viruses, including the H1N1 virus. Wall Street Journal article.

The Charles David Keeling Lecture will be held Monday, Sept. 13, 2010 at 7:00 pm in 100 Noyes Lab. Dr. Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences will present his talk titled "CO₂, Energy and Climate: Then and Now". Dr. Keeling measured carbon dioxide levels from the Mauna Loa Observatory and constructed a model of the carbon cycle taking into account human activities. He was one of the first to warn of the "greenhouse effect" and global warming. He received a B.A. in chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1948.

Taekjip Ha and his research team used single molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) to identify one of the mechanisms that the helicase enzyme PcrA uses to regulate DNA recombination of damaged DNA. Their research was published in the journal Cell. UIUC News Bureau article, Cell article.

Nathan Price, Pan-Jun Kim and others are studying the validity of the ninety seven year old Michaelis-Menten equation to determine enzyme activity in cells. The Price research group uses mathematical modeling to compare the equation predictions with new results from data on single cells. ScienceNews article.

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