LINXS Guest Seminar with Prof. Dieter Richter

Time: December 5, 15.15 - 16.15

Place: Workshop room at LINXS, Ideon Delta 5,
Scheelevägen 19, 5th floor

Title: Large Scale Protein Motion: from functional dynamics to intrinsically disordered proteins

Proteins are very dynamic objects and exhibit molecular motions starting from the picoseconds to the range of seconds covering length scales from small side groups to the whole protein. In this talk I address the large scale global motions of proteins, the functional dynamics of protein-domains as well as the large scale motions of intrinsically unfolded proteins (IUP). Using neutron spin echo spectroscopy such motions can be directly addressed in measuring their dynamic structure factor in solution. Such experiments deliver both, the time scale as well as the motional pattern of such dynamics. I introduce the approach on the example of Alcoholdehydrogenase (ADH), an important enzyme that catalyses the oxidation of ethanol. Then I’ll turn to phosphorglycerate kinase, a protein in glycolysis that transforms ADP to ATP. There I show that the domain dynamic is essential, in order to reach the catalytic configuration. In addition to configurational adjustments (induced fit) the domain dynamics itself is an essential part of protein function. For Immunoglobulin NSE revealed fast adaptive dynamics of the functional domains and found a natural example for a true entropic spring.

For the case of an IDP, I present results on myelin basic protein showing that the large scale dynamics is not polymer like as has been invoked for other IUP’s using single molecule techniques, but follows a pattern where the outer part moves significantly but the inner part of this protein remains rather immobile.  All dynamic results are supported by small angle scattering data on the structure of these proteins in solution. 

A Prof. em., Dr. at Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), Dieter Richter received his Diploma in theoretical Physics at the TU-Braunschweig and his PhD degree in experimental physics (1977) at the RWTH Aachen, Germany. After post-doctoral work at the Brookhaven National Laboratory he moved to FZJ and performed his Habilitation at the RWTH Aachen in 1983. In 1985 he assumed a position as senior scientist at the ILL in Grenoble. In 1989 he was appointed as director at the Institut für Festkörperforschung at FZJ and in 2011 he became Scientific Director at the FRM2 Reactor in Munich. In 2015 he retired from his positions and now works as an advisor for FZJ. Dieter Richter co-authored more than 600 papers, which have received over 17000 citations and an H-index of 65. He has received several high-ranking awards among which the Schottky Award of the German Physical Society, the Max Planck Award, the Erwin Schrödinger Award and the Walter Hälg Prize of the European Neutron Scattering Association. He was a member and also chairperson of a large number of scientific panels such as the scientific council of the ILL or the OECD Mega Science Forum. Among others he founded the European neutron scattering association and the European network of excellence “SoftComp”.

His current interests are the structure and dynamics of macromolecular soft and biological systems.