Join us for a lecture "How enzymes adapt to the cold?" by prof. Johan Åqvist, an eminent biochemist, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and former chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Date and time: 15 November at 3 pm
Place: R401

Abstract

Enzymes from ectothermic species adapted to cold environments are able to maintain surprisingly high catalytic rates at low temperatures, where normal enzymes have lost most of their activity. These cold-adapted enzymes have some characteristic and universal properties that reflect their evolutionary optimization and we will discuss the structural and energetic principles of cold-adaptation. In particular, we will show how the temperature dependence of enzyme reaction rates can be obtained from atomistic computer simulations and how such calculations can shed new light on enzyme evolution in differently adapted species.

Speaker Biosketch

Ph.D. 1987 in Computational Structural Biology, Swedish Univ. of Agricultural Sciences.
Postdoc 1987-1989 at the Dept. of Chemistry, Univ. of Southern California.
Assistant and associate professor in Structural Biology, 1990-1999, Uppsala University.
Senior researcher in Theoretical Biochemistry, Swedish Research Council, 2000-2006. Professor of Theoretical Chemistry, 2000, Uppsala University.
Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2009.
Wallenberg Scholar, 2024.