Significance of Knotted Structures for Function of Proteins and Nucleic Acids
Welcome Letter
September 2014
Dear Colleagues,
We would like to welcome you to the conference on the “
Significance of Knotted
Structures for Function of Proteins and Nucleic Acids
”. During this meeting we will focus on
recent progress in identifying a biological role of knots in proteins and nucleic acids. This is a
new, interdisciplinary field, which has recently been extensively explored by many groups. One
important motivation to study these topics is an increasing number of proteins with knots being
discovered. Knots are surprising from the biological point of view: for a long time it was
believed that such structures would complicate folding and unfolding processes, and thus should
be eliminated during evolution by the hosting organism. Today, we know that knots exist in all
kingdoms of life and they are gradually being recognized as significant structural motifs. The
above finding has challenged our preconceptions about the complexity of biological objects and
inspired research into how these tangling properties affect the functions of proteins. However,
we still do not understand what the biological role of knots is, what their advantage for hosting
organisms is, how they can be degraded, or how complex the knots formed in proteins can be.
We believe that this conference will shed light on these questions and will inspire new and
interesting directions of research.
The other important foci of the conference are pseudo-knots in RNA, as well as knots in
DNA and complex structures such as viruses. Pseudo-knots are widespread in non-coding RNAs,
where they serve essential biological purposes. There is recent evidence that topological isomers
in RNA are more feasible than first thought, raising the possibility of the existence of true knots
or more complex pseudoknotted structures. On the other hand, non-trivial topologies of DNA
play critical role in transcription and other genetic processes.
Mathematics, and knot theory in particular, play a very important role in the analysis of
the above problems. An important part of the conference is devoted to the analysis of
mathematical problems inspired by knotting in biomolecules. It is clear that an interdisciplinary
approach, which involves biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics, will be most successful
in this field in the years to come.
This meeting will provide a forum for analysis and discussion of entanglement in proteins
and nucleic acids. The conference offers a full program with more than 40 lectures and over 50
posters, and brings together around 120 renowned researchers from different fields related to
these topics: biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. We hope that we can create an
inspiring and scientifically challenging atmosphere during the conference.
Sincerely yours,
Wilma Olson, Jose Onuchic, Matthias Rief, Joanna Sulkowska, Sarah Woodson
Programming Committee
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