Biochemistry Seminar: Michelle D. Wang, Professor, Dept of Physics, and Dept of Cell & Developmental Biology, Cornell University, NY, will give a talk titled, "Molecular Highways – Navigating Collisions of DNA Motor Proteins"

ABSTRACT

DNA molecules can been seen as molecular highways that are concurrently shared by a plethora of motor proteins carrying out the fundamental processes of replication, transcription, and DNA repair and recombination. On the one-lane highway of a DNA substrate, multiple motor proteins travel at various speeds in different directions and thus traffic congestion and collisions among these motor proteins are simply inevitable.  Recent advances in single molecule approaches are providing insights in the mechanisms of how these motor proteins coordinate and negotiate their passage and how this coordination relieves traffic congestion and damages.