Significance of Knotted Structures for Function of Proteins and Nucleic Acids - September 17-21, 2014

Significance of Knotted Structures for Function of Proteins and Nucleic Acids

Welcome Letter

September 2014

Dear Colleagues, We would like to welcome you to the conference on the “ Significance of Knotted Structures for Function of Proteins and Nucleic Acids ”. During this meeting we will focus on recent progress in identifying a biological role of knots in proteins and nucleic acids. This is a new, interdisciplinary field, which has recently been extensively explored by many groups. One important motivation to study these topics is an increasing number of proteins with knots being discovered. Knots are surprising from the biological point of view: for a long time it was believed that such structures would complicate folding and unfolding processes, and thus should be eliminated during evolution by the hosting organism. Today, we know that knots exist in all kingdoms of life and they are gradually being recognized as significant structural motifs. The above finding has challenged our preconceptions about the complexity of biological objects and inspired research into how these tangling properties affect the functions of proteins. However, we still do not understand what the biological role of knots is, what their advantage for hosting organisms is, how they can be degraded, or how complex the knots formed in proteins can be. We believe that this conference will shed light on these questions and will inspire new and interesting directions of research. The other important foci of the conference are pseudo-knots in RNA, as well as knots in DNA and complex structures such as viruses. Pseudo-knots are widespread in non-coding RNAs, where they serve essential biological purposes. There is recent evidence that topological isomers in RNA are more feasible than first thought, raising the possibility of the existence of true knots or more complex pseudoknotted structures. On the other hand, non-trivial topologies of DNA play critical role in transcription and other genetic processes. Mathematics, and knot theory in particular, play a very important role in the analysis of the above problems. An important part of the conference is devoted to the analysis of mathematical problems inspired by knotting in biomolecules. It is clear that an interdisciplinary approach, which involves biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics, will be most successful in this field in the years to come. This meeting will provide a forum for analysis and discussion of entanglement in proteins and nucleic acids. The conference offers a full program with more than 40 lectures and over 50 posters, and brings together around 120 renowned researchers from different fields related to these topics: biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. We hope that we can create an inspiring and scientifically challenging atmosphere during the conference.

Sincerely yours, Wilma Olson, Jose Onuchic, Matthias Rief, Joanna Sulkowska, Sarah Woodson Programming Committee

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