Friday 21st Oct Dr Jon Weaver (Imperial College, London): Responsive polymer-stabilised emulsion droplets and the 3D structuring of liquids
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Friday 11th Nov Dr Ozgur Yazaydin (University of Surrey): CO2 capture in Metal-Organic Frameworks
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Friday 25th Nov Dr Mark Leake (University of Oxford): Using bespoke fluorescence microscopy to study the soft matter of living cells at the single molecule level
The use of bespoke imaging tools and analysis can offer significant insight into the
living counterpart of soft condensed matter. The soft matter of biological systems consists of molecular building blocks, a staple of which is protein. Protein molecules, so small that 1 billion would fit on the full-stop at the end of this sentence, carry out most of the vital activities in living cells. Many of these processes require the assembly of multiple proteins into remarkable biological machines. Obtaining the blueprints for the architecture of these machines is essential for understanding the workings of the cell. Here, I will discuss recent biological physics experiments on functional single-celled organisms in which one can apply bespoke fluorescence microscopy imaging and analysis to monitor the number and dynamics of several
different proteins at the nanometre length scale to a precision of single molecules. 1
Reyes-Lamothe R, Sherratt DJ, Leake MC. Stoichiometry and architecture of active DNA replication machinery in Escherichia coli. Science. 2010, 328, 498-501.
Friday 9th Dec Dr Peter Petrov (University of Exeter): Red Blood Cell Physical Properties in Health and Disease
Monday 16th January Dr Janet Wong (Imperial College): Dynamics of Confined Polymers
Monday 27th February Prof Steve Parker (University of Bath): Probing Oxide and Mineral Surfaces and Interfaces using Atomistic Simulation Techniques
Tuesday 13th March Dr Peter Bolhuis (Department of Chemistry, University of Amsterdam): TBA
Tuesday 20th March Dr Othmar Marti (Department of Physics, University of Ulm): Keratin filaments and networks
Friday 11th May Dr Richard Graham (School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Nottingham): Modelling nucleation in flowing polymer melts
Polymer fluids are composed of extremely long chain molecules, which give these fluids very rich and highly non-linear flow properties. Furthermore, external flow has a huge influence on how polymers crystallise. Flow drastically increases the crystallisation rate and drives the formation of new and useful crystalline morphologies. This flow induced crystallisation (FIC) is ubiquitous in commercial polymer processing and it strongly influences virtually every useful property of polymer products. A fundamental understanding of FIC would confer extensive control of polymer solid state properties. However, modelling polymer FIC is extremely challenging due to the huge spread in relevant lengthscales and timescales. Simulation is also especially difficult because the crystallisation dynamics are controlled by extremely rare activated crossing of the nucleation barrier.
We have recently been using a highly coarse-grained simulation algorithm for polymer nucleation. This has provided some encouraging comparisons with experiments and highlighted some methods to improve more detailed molecular simulations. I will summarise current results and discuss methods of increasing the speed of barrier crossing simulations, along with techniques to map simulation algorithms on to non-stochastic models. Finally, I will also highlight some possible methods to increase the physical detail of the underlying polymer nucleation model.
We have recently been using a highly coarse-grained simulation algorithm for polymer nucleation. This has provided some encouraging comparisons with experiments and highlighted some methods to improve more detailed molecular simulations. I will summarise current results and discuss methods of increasing the speed of barrier crossing simulations, along with techniques to map simulation algorithms on to non-stochastic models. Finally, I will also highlight some possible methods to increase the physical detail of the underlying polymer nucleation model.