Volume 16 Number 1	Fall 1999

NSF-IGERT Computational Neuroscience First Symposium Supercomputing Institute Research Scholars 1999 Undergraduate Summer Interns Physics of Supersonic Cosmic Flows Flow and Transport in Porous Media Ill-Nitride Semiconductor Devices Structural Studies of Toxins Produced during Staphylococcal Infections Submicron Magnetic Structures Preconditioning Large Sparse Matrix Problems Biomolecular Interactions and Enzymatic Reactions Visitors Research Reports ne of the central questions in molecular biology is the origin of the catalytic power of enzymes. The rapid revolution in structural determination and accumulation of biochemical information offers a unique opportunity of elucidating the detailed mechanisms of enzymatic reactions. This, however, requires an adequate description of the intermolecular interactions that govern macroscopic biological functions. One of the successful approaches in computational biology is to combine quantum mechanics with classical force fields, which allows the proper treatment of the chemical process, but still retains computational efficiency. In this talk, Professor Gao discussed his recent studies of two enzyme systems, the dephosphorylation reaction by a protein tyrosine phosphatase, and the chorismate to prephenate rearrangement by chorismate mutase. As a prelude to studies of photochemical reactions in biological systems, the computational method was illustrated by investigating the origin of the opsin shifts in bacteriohrodopsin. Professor Darin York (left) of the Chemistry Department at the University of Minnesota and Professor Jiali Gao (right) at an informal lunch on the day of the colloquium visit. Digital Technology Initiative in Computational Biological Sciences      Shortly after this colloquium, Professor Gao accepted a position as professor of Chemistry and Supercomputing Institute Fellow at the University of Minnesota, and he will join the University in January 2000. This is the third senior faculty appointment made as part of the Digital Technology Initiative in Computational Biological Sciences. The first two were Professor Alexander Grosberg, who has joined the Physics Faculty here following his previous appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Professor Hans Othmer, who joined the Mathematics Faculty here following his previous appointment at the University of Utah. Professors Grosberg and Othmer became Supercomputing Institute Fellows in Summer 1999.