Special Topics In Biochemistry: Hydrodynamic Methods. 1 Credit Hour

Catalog description

This course is intended to provide students with the opportunity to gain a solid understanding of hydrodynamics and macromolecular transport processes, such as sedimentation and diffusion. The focus will be on hydrodynamic methods involving analytical ultracentrifugation and light scattering. Topics in sedimentation velocity, sedimentation equilibrium, buoyant density sedimentation, as well as static and dynamic light scattering and the complementarity of these approaches will be discussed. Macromolecular interactions involving mass action, concentration dependent nonideality, and reaction rates are covered. This course will also cover a range of data analysis approaches including the van Holde-Weischet method, the second moment method, direct boundary fitting by finite element modeling, the C(s) method, the 2-dimensional spectrum analysis, genetic algorithm optimization, nonlinear least squares fitting approaches to user-defined models. Statistical analysis using Monte Carlo and bootstrap methods also will be covered.