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Journal of Biotechnology and Phytochemistry
Volume 1 Issue 3
Notes:
Chemistry World 2017
November 13-15, 2017 Athens, Greece
7
th
World Congress on
Chemistry
Yifat Miller, J Biotech and Phyto 2017
Investigating neurodegenerative diseases
by computational biophysical chemistry
P
rotein aggregation of amyloids is associated with
numerous incurable diseases, including amyloid
β (Aβ) in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and α-synuclein
in Parkinson's disease (PD). Clinical studies have
shown that patients with AD can develop PD and vis-
á-versa. Experimental evidence led to the hypothesis
that cross-amyloid interactions (e.g., interactions
between Aβ and α-synuclein) also play a critical role in
protein aggregation. Structure-based characterization
of the interactions between two types of amyloids
is fundamental to understanding the self-assembly
mechanism that exists between them and may pave
the way to elucidate the link between two diseases
(e.g. PD and AD). Computational biophysical chemistry
tools are critical techniques to investigate the molecular
mechanisms of these proteins. The Nobel prize in
Chemistry 2013 was awarded jointly to Martin Karplus,
Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel for the development
of these techniques to investigate the chemistry behind
the biological systems. The lecture will demonstrate
how these computational tools assist us to investigate
neurodegenerative diseases.
Biography
Yifat Miller has completed her PhD in Chemistry from the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem (Israel) in 2007. She did her Postdoc in the National Institute of Health
(MD, USA) and was awarded the prestigious HFSP and NIH grants. She has
published more than 60 papers in several journals, among which are Nature
Comm., JACS, PNAS, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Chem. Comm. She is serving as an
editor in Scientific Report of Nature publishing. She was awarded prizes such as
Toronto prize for excellence of young faculty member. She is currently anAssociate
Professor in the Chemistry Department at BGU.
ymiller@bgu.ac.ilYifat Miller
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel