Spring Semester 2007

Courses for Seniors and Graduate Students

Computer Modeling of Biological Systems

Please visit the course web-site: www.ccr.buffalo.edu/mfrein/index.htm

The courses will be taught by Dr. Marek Freindorf, CCR Computational Scientist.

The courses are sponsored by the Professional Science Master's Program of UB and UB's Center for Computational Research.

The courses are in the form of a computational laboratory, based on Windows PC workstations, Q-Chem/AMBER software for calculations and Spartan/Accelrys software for visualization. The calculations for the courses will be performed using the computing resources of UB’s Center for Computational Research (www.ccr.buffalo.edu).

All materials used in the courses are located on a web-server (www.ccr.buffalo.edu/mfrein/index.htm) in PDF format.

The courses are designed for seniors and graduate students who are interested in studying biological systems at the molecular level. Students will learn how to calculate molecular properties of protein active-sites, interactions between a drug molecule and a protein receptor, and more.

The courses (Part I, II and III) are an introduction to computational methods for molecular modeling of biological systems such as proteins and nucleic acids. The goal is to provide a general overview of computational quantum chemistry (Part I), molecular mechanics (Part II), and a combined QM/MM method (Part III) as applied to molecules of biological interest. Prerequisites for the course are physical chemistry (quantum chemisty/quantum mechanics) and organic chemistry.