| 报告题目： |
Walking Between Worlds: An Exploration of The Interface Between Biology and Physics |
| 报告人： |
谢灿 教授 |
| 报告人单位： |
北京大学 |
| 报告时间： |
3月16日 星期四 16:00 |
| 报告地点： |
图书馆五楼报告厅 |
| 报告摘要： |
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My talk will cover two current research directions of our lab. These two research lines provide us a unique vision to explore the interface between biological world and physical world at molecular level. (I) Magnetoreception, animal migration and bio-navigation: The notion that animals can detect the Earth’s magnetic field was once ridiculed, but is now well-established fact. However, the nature of this enigmatic sense has remained a fascinating and unresolved biological mystery. Previously, we identified a magnetic receptor (MagR) in animals and a rod-like protein complex magnetosensor. The magnetosensor system is a nano-scale biological compass consisting of photoreceptor Cryptochromes and magnetoreceptors, and has intrinsic magnetic polarity in alignment with magnetic fields, including the Earth’s geomagnetic field. However, questions remain: What is the origin of magnetic moments of MagR? How the light- and magneto- perceptions are coupled in our Biocompass theory? How the signals from geomagnetic field is perceived with MagR and converted to neural signals? Do animals have ‘Molecular gyroscope’ and ‘Quantum gyroscope’ to guide their navigation? And how to apply magnetic fields to modulate biological processes based on MagR? We may find answers to these biological mysteries from interdisciplinary studies. (II) Cephalopods, the group of animals including octopus, squid and cuttlefish, have remarkable ability to instantly modulate body coloration and patterns so as to blend into surrounding environments or send warning signals to other animals. Reflectin, named because of its high refractive index, is expressed exclusively in cephalopods and forms reflectors responsible for dynamic iridescence and structural color change. We report the hierarchical structural architecture of reflectin protein. Intrinsic self-assembly, along with higher-order assembly, provide insights into the formation of multilayer reflectors in iridophores and spherical microparticles in leucophores, and form the basis of structural color change in cephalopods. |
| 报告人简介： |
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Prof. Can Xie received his B.S. in Biology from Hunan Normal University in 1995, his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry from Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001. His postdoc training was with Prof. Timothy Springer in Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. He began as Principal Investigator at School of Life Sciences in Peking University in 2009. He currently is also Adjunct Professor at Beijing Computational Science Research Center (CSRC), Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP). Prof.. Can Xie is awarded as the “2015 Top 10 Scientific Advances in the Life Sciences of China” (for the discovery of animal magnetoreceptor MagR. His academic interests now focus on the molecular mechanism of (I) animal magnetoreception, migration and navigation, (II) structural color, dynamic color change and bio-invisibility. As Dr. Hans Frauenfelder proposed in Physical Biology 2014, ‘Ask not what physics can do for biology—ask what biology can do for physics’, Dr. Xie's lab has been working on the interface between the biological and physical worlds. |
