Treatment for diseases which arise from defective genes has taken another step forward, thanks to the world’s first atomistic model of an entire gene – a simulation of over one billion atoms created in Los Alamos National Laboratory in USA. Several Cambridge alumni are a part of the team, including Queens’ Part 3 physicist Dominic Phillips, who spent his summer last year on a research placement in Los Alamos.
Dominic worked with Dr. Anna Lappala (Lucy Cavendish) in the lab of Dr. Karissa Sanbonmatsu (Pembroke), using his training in the field of polymers and biological physics. They used molecular dynamics simulations to study the motions of atoms and molecules to understand the structure-function relationships of polymers such as DNA and RNA.
In the image right, 83,000 basepairs of DNA (blue) are wrapping around molecular spools called histones (there are 427 spools in this gene). The simulation has over a billion atoms, making it the largest simulation of an intact biomolecular complex to date. There are two meters of DNA in each cell, tightly packed into the cell nucleus that is only 6 microns in diameter.
For more information on the project, visit https://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-archive/2019/April/0422-atom-biomolecular-simulation.php.
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