Date: 2024-11-04
Time: 10:30
Venue: M234
Speaker: Professor R. J. DWAYNE MILLER
　　　　 University of Toronto

报告人简介:

R. J. Dwayne Miller加拿大多伦多大学杰出教授，加拿大科学院以及英国皇家科学院院士。2010至2020年期间，为德国马克斯普朗克研究所汉堡分所创始人兼第一任主任。Miller教授是德国国家自然科学基金（DFG）集群项目负责人，获得过加拿大国家自然科学基金以及欧盟研究基金重点支持项目（ERC advanced）等。主要从事超快物理、超快化学以及生物学、医学等领域的研究，一共发表300多篇学术论文，代表性研究成果包括：首次利用超快电子衍射实现在飞秒量级抓拍到光导金属晶格融化的过程；利用啁啾激光脉冲，在视觉蛋白中首次实现量子产率的控制；利用超快多维光谱，诠释了光合作用蛋白中能量传输的机制；皮秒红外激光，实施无伤疤手术；X射线以及电子显微解析蛋白质大分子结构等。获得过包括卢瑟福化学奖、美国化学学会 E. Bright Wilson 奖以及欧洲物理学会激光科学奖等。

报告摘要：

The posed quintessential question is not cast as an origins of life issue here but rather directed towards understanding the underlying physics by which chemistry breathes life into otherwise inanimate matter. The real issue is how chemistry scales in complexity up to the level of biological systems. For even relatively small molecules (e.g., 10 to 100 atoms), there are an enormous number of possible nuclear configurations that could propagate the system from one molecular form to another during a chemical event. Chemistry is inherently a high dimensional problem of order 3N (N= number of atoms) and highly nonlinear in sampling rates for different reaction trajectories.To explain the observed time scales for chemistry and biological processes, there must be an enormous reduction in dimensionality at the barrier crossing region, controlling the kinetics, in which a few key modes direct the chemistry – irrespective of complexity. The challenge is to try to unearth these motions and to understand a priori which motions are directing the chemistry and thereby biological functions. With the recent advent of ultrabright electron sources using femtosecond laser photo-injection, it is now possible to directly observe the atomic motions involved to complete the picture. Based on model systems, a simple concept is introduced to understand the spatially correlated forces leading to generalized reaction mechanisms, which makes chemistry a transferrable concept. Several atomically resolved molecular movies will be presented to dramatically show this effect and the concept of key reaction modes. The problem is much more challenging within cells where the number of possible interactions becomes truly astronomical, as will be discussed. The lessons learned above give hope to find similar dynamically coupled spatial correlations, but these will be related to free energy gradients that arise within intracellular architecture. New technologies, based on the space charge limits mastered in ultrabright electron source development, will dramatically improve ion collection for laser based spatial imaging mass spectrometry that will enable us to look inside the cell to directly observe the driving forces for living systems, i.e., to quantify life. This prospect promises to fill in the gaps between genetic information and protein expression, from the blue print to the actual execution of the code. The light matter interactions being exploited and technological requirements under development to achieve this Moon Shot for Biology will be discussed as part of proposal for a strategic initiative to map the cell.

联系人：胡江平 研究员（8264 9818）

　　　　李玉同 研究员（8264 8014）、李运良（8264 9970）