Structure and Dynamics of Nucleic Acids, Proteins, and Membranes

This volume collects a number of the invited lectures and a few selected contrib­ utions presented at the International Symposium on Structure and Dynamics of Nucleic Acids, Proteins and Membranes held August 31st through September 5th, 1986, in Riva del Garda, Italy. The title of the conference as well as a number of the topics covered represent a continuation of two previous conferences, the first held in 1982 at the University of California in San Diego, and the second in 1984 in Rome at the Accademia dei Lincei. These two earlier conferences have been documented in Structure and Dynamics: Nucleic Acids and Proteins, edited by E. Clementi and R. H. Sarma, Adenine Press, New York, 1983, and Structure and Motion: Membranes, Nucleic Acids and Proteins, edited by E. Clementi, G. Corongiu, M. H. Sarma and R. H. Sarma, Adenine Press, New York, 1985. At this conference in Riva del Garda we were very hesitant to keep the name of the conference the same as the two previous ones. Indeed, a number of topics discussed in this conference were not included in the previous ones and even the emphasis of this gathering is only partly reflected in the conference title. An alternative title would have been Structure and Dynamics of Nucleic Acids, Proteins, and Higher Functions, or, possibly, "higher components" rather than "higher functions.

Table of Contents:
I. Structure of Macromolecules.- Conformational Analysis of Polypeptides and Proteins for the Study of Protein Folding, Molecular Recognition, and Molecular Design.- Conformation of Non-Crystalline Proteins Viewed by NMR.- Structures and Superstructures in Periodical Polynucleotides.- Conformational Peculiarities and Biological Role of Some Nucleotide Sequences.- Multifrequency ESR of an Isotopically Enriched Copper System in the Immobilized Phase: A Monte Carlo Approach.- Neutron Scattering from Agarose Gels.- Non-Empirical Pair Potentials for the Interaction Between Amino Acids.- II. Dynamics of Macromolecules.- Molecular Dynamics of Proteins.- Proton NMR Studies of Protein Dynamics and Folding: Applications of Magnetization Transfer NMR.- Distributions and Fluctuations of Protein Structures Investigated by X-Ray Analysis and Mössbauer Spectroscopy.- Rotational Motions of Tryptophan and Tyrosine Residues in Proteins.- Protein Fluctuations and Hemeprotein Affinity for Ligand.- Cytochrome Oxidase in Energy Transduction.- Proteins and Glasses.- III. Solvation of Macromolecules.- Global Ab Initio Simulations: Study of a Liquid as an Example.- Proton Conductivity of Hydrated Lysozyme Powders, Considered Within the Framework of Percolation Theory.- Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Biomolecules in Water.- Low Frequency Coherent Vibrations of DNA: The Role of the Hydration Shell and Phosphate-Phosphate Interactions.- IV. Components of Larger Systems.- Elasticity, Structure and Dynamics of Cell Plasma Membrane and Biological Functions.- Neuronal Signaling. A Simple Thermodynamic Process Involving Complex Membrane Proteins.- Panel Discussions: Session 1. Understanding Brain Mechanisms and the Challenge of Artificial Intelligence Machines: An Interdisciplinary Approach;Session 2. Sixth Generation Computers: A Sketch.- Physicists Explore Human and Artificial Intelligence.- Recognition Automata Based on Selective Neural Networks.- A Neural Theory of Preattentive Visual Information Processing: Emergent Segmentation, Cooperative-Competitive Computation, and Parallel Memory Storage.- Large-Scale Computations on a Scalar, Vector and Parallel “Supercomputer”.