Molecular recognition phenomena are central to most biological interactions and processes. They are responsible for the non-covalent specific interactions between biomolecules and various ligands and between two or more biological molecules exemplified by receptor-ligand, DNA-protein, antigen-antibody, sugar-lectin and other recognition phenomena.
In recent years, our understanding of the basic physico-chemical principles underlying all these interactions has grown considerably both at the structural atomic level and at the functional level in terms of kinetic binding constants. This course will discuss some of the unifying rules that govern all molecular recognition phenomena and will describe how novel nanotechnology and biosensor tools have helped to analyze single molecule recognition events as well as the dynamics of intracellular interactions.
Two days of the course will be devoted to the study of two instances of molecular recognition phenomena in immunology,
1) the nature and prediction of B cell epitopes in proteins and the development of synthetic vaccines.
2) The modulation of innate and adaptive immunity to pathogens
The course will stress the basic principles underlying the structure, dynamics and activity of biological recognition sites and will illustrate the application of this knowledge to two current research areas in molecular immunology.