Event date:
Feb 25 2022 3:00 pm

A personal exploration of the molecules of life; 8th Abdus Salam Memorial Lecture

Speaker(s)
Dr Shahid Khan
Venue
Hall 10-201 SBASSE Building, LUMS
Abstract
Proteins are the workhorses of living systems. Atomic structures of these molecular machines ushered in the molecular biology era. Proteins change shape to regulate energy and sensory transduction pathways. Functional protein motions are determined by interactions with solvent water. My work has focused on development of imaging and computational tools to link protein motions to their molecular structure. It has been based on two ring assemblies. The rotary motors of bacterial flagella are powered by a membrane-embedded proton battery. The motors switch rotation sense in response to an intracellular phospho-relay for migration towards nutrients. The calcium calmodulin dependent protein kinase-II is a frequency decoder that remodels neuronal compartments for a memory trace of synaptic activity. I will detail a few examples from my work on these assemblies to illustrate how they have revealed the design principles underlying protein machines.


We are delighted to announce that the 8th Abdus Salam Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Shahid Khan, who will be delivering his lecture on ‘A Personal Exploration of the Molecules of Life’. The lecture is scheduled to take place at 3pm on February 25, in hall 10-201 of the SBASSE building, in LUMS. We will also be streaming this talk live on LUMS' Facebook Page. 

Dr. Shahid Masihuddin Khan was born in 1954. He was educated at Karachi Grammar School, King’s College London (B.Sc.), Yale (PhD) and Caltech (Post-Doc). After a stint as UN TOKTEN expert to assist with the set-up of the Center for Excellence in Molecular Biology (Punjab University), he joined the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY) as Assistant Professor (1986). He left at Full Professor moving his group to the University of Illinois Medical School in Chicago (2001-5). He then participated in planning and setup of the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering, LUMS, later returning to the US as Senior Scientist (Molecular Biology Consortium, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His group, with collaborators from multiple institutions, has published over 60 articles and been funded by multiple grants since 1986 within the US and abroad. Several of his students have gone on to faculty positions in Pakistan as well as the US.

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