Eleni Panagiotou, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Title: Topological Metrics of Biopolymer Structure and Function
SEMINAR (In-Person and Zoom)
Due to the current situation, the Current Topics in Bioengneering seminar will be hosted in-person only to those who are meeting with the speaker. Please join us online via Zoom. RSVP to receive the zoom link by emailing info@bioengineering.ucsb.edu by January 24th.
Zoom will open after the host has joined at the start of each seminar. You can ask questions through the chat forum and by raising your "hand" and the speaker will call on you.
Speaker
Eleni Panagiotou, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics and SimCenter
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Faculty Host
Ryan Stowers
9:00 am in Bldg. ESB Room #1001
Topological Metrics of Biopolymer Structure and Function
Abstract
Proteins and other biopolymers can be represented by mathematical curves in space. Understanding the structure of such macromolecules is at the core of very important problems in biology, such as protein folding, protein aggregation and cell nucleus organization and function. The single, pairwise, or multi-chain characterization of entanglement complexity becomes rigorous in the context of mathematical topology. In this talk we will introduce a novel and general topological approach to analyze the structures of macromolecules. We will apply our methods to proteins and show that these enable us to create a new framework for understanding protein folding, which is validated by experimental data. When applied to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, we see that topology can predict residues where mutations can have an important impact on protein structure and possibly in viral transmissibility. These methods can thus help us understand biopolymer function and biological material properties in many contexts with the goal of their prediction and design.
BIO
Dr. Eleni Panagiotou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). She also leads the Advanced Modeling and Simulation Thrust of the SimCenter, a multi-disciplinary research center at UTC. She obtained her PhD from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in Applied Mathematics and was a visiting researcher in the Department of Physics at the EPFL in Lausanne, in the Department of Materials at ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, and at the Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, UK. During 2013-18, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor and Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at UCSB. Dr. Panagiotou’s research interests in topology and applied knot theory are at the interfaces of Materials, Physics, Biology, and Engineering. She recently received an NSF CAREER award to quantify and understand the effects of entanglement on the properties of active polymers, in particular biomolecules in cells.
