CPM Seminar

Strategies for Investigating Biomolecular Self-Assembly At Interfaces

Christopher Yip

University of Toronto

In support of our on-going efforts to understand the fundamental mechanisms responsible for the self-assembly of biomolecules, and the functional implications of the resulting architectures, we have been devising new integrated instrumentation and computational strategies that build on recent advances in single molecule imaging and molecular dynamics simulations. I will describe some of our recent studies of membrane protein assembly using a powerful and flexible functional imaging platform that combines high-resolution optical and scanning probe microscopies. The potential, challenges, and future prospects of this platform, as well as a complementary tool that combines infrared spectroscopy with scanning probe microscopy will be described.