WEBVTT

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Good afternoon, everyone.

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My name is Pho.

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I'm a senior majoring
in biochemistry

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and minoring in statistics
here at Mount Holyoke College.

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It's my pleasure today to
stand here and present to you

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my summer experience.

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So last summer, I worked with
Professor Alan van Giessen

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at Mount Holyoke College in
the chemistry department.

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We were doing computational
chemistry research,

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and I was very nervous at first
because I am not a computer

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science major, but everything
turned out to be fine,

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and I liked what I was doing.

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So I can't wait to share
with you all my excitement

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during summer.

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So before going into the
details of my research topic,

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I wanted to refresh your
memory about protein function.

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So each protein has
its own 3D structure,

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and therefore it can carry
out its specific function--

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like enzyme, or cell
signaling, or ligand binding,

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and structural support.

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That's why we are all here,
thanks to the proteins that

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function in our body.

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So because the protein has
this very specific function,

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it's usually regarded as
the building blocks of life.

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But as much as protein is
very important to our life,

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it's also very prone
to degradation.

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And in protein language, it's
called protein denaturation.

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As the picture here shows,
when denaturation happens,

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the normal protein will
lose its native structure,

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and it becomes very extended.

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That's why it cannot
function properly.

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And this is very
devastating to our life,

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because the consequence can
be the disruption of cell

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activity, and even cell death.

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So I want to focus today
on the denaturation

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of the protein due to the
effect of temperature.

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So when you think
of temperature,

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it can be hot and cold.

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And hot denaturation is very
familiar to many of you,

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if you notice, because in
your kitchen every day,

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when you cook egg, the protein
called albumin in the egg white

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is denatured.

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It becomes opaque.

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So my project aimed at studying
cold denaturation of protein

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in the presence of
crowding agents.

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So what is crowding agent?

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Crowding agents are
biomolecules that

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co-exist with your protein of
interest in the environment

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that you want to study.

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So crowding agent mimics
the cellular environment.

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At any given period of time,
your protein inside your body

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never exists by itself.

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It's always surrounded by
thousands and thousands

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of molecules.

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So if we incorporate
crowding agents,

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it will give us
better understanding

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of how the protein
behaves inside your cell.

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And in order to approach to
answer my research question,

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I used a method called
molecular dynamics simulation.

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This is a very simple
one that illustrates.

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So molecular dynamics
is a piece of code

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that enables you to solve
the numerical values

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of the equation of Newtonian
equation of motion.

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So basically, it will give
you the position, velocity,

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and acceleration of a particular
particle at a given time.

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This is the MD mode that
I wrote over the summer.

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This is a very basic one for
a system of 10 particles.

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So you only need to input
the initial position

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for each particle and
that initial velocity

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for each particle.

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Also, you have to
define the temperature

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at which you are interested
in studying your protein.

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So if you're interested
in my research topic,

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I can tell you more about
it after this panel.

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And this is the most important
of this presentation.

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[LAUGHTER]

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This is summer fun
that I had here.

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I had the opportunity to work
with really awesome people,

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and one of them is here today.

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Is Shanza

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Hi, you guys.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And also, unexpectedly, I was
enrolled in the Cycling 101

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class, just because my
advisor, Alan van Giessen,

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he is a really big
fan of cycling,

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so he taught us everything we
need to know about cycling.

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We watched Tour de
France every morning

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before we start working in lab.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And then our group,
we went to Amherst

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to enjoy Antonio's Pizza,
went to froyo ice cream,

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and also hiking event going
on on campus during summer.

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And most importantly,
Mount Holyoke College

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has put together a
summer talk series that

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features a lot of research
that's going on in Five College

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Consortium, and that was
very interesting for us

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as scientists to know
more about what's going.

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And my advice to
you is that, don't

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be afraid of what you
haven't known before,

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what's not exposed to
you, because you might

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be surprised on your ability.

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Because for me, I'm not
a computer science major,

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but after this summer,
I learned so much,

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and to continue in that, I will
enroll in a computer science

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class next semester.

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[APPLAUSE]

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