结构生物学sturcture biology explore-25.pdfVIP

? 2001 Nature Publishing Group history The birth of computational structural biology Michael Levitt Like Sydney Altman1, I too was initially rejected by the renowned Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. The year was 1967 and I was then in my final year of a B.Sc. degree in Physics at Kings College in London. Enthralled by John Kendrew’s BBC 1964 television series “The Thread of Life”, I wanted desperately to do my Ph.D. at the MRC in Cambridge. Alas there was no room for any new postgraduate students in 1967! After some negotiations, I was accepted for the following year. More importantly, John Kendrew said that I should spend the intervening period at the Weizmann Institute in Israel with Shneior Lifson. Kendrew had just heard of Lifson’s initial ideas2 on the consistent force field (CFF), which was an attempt to simulate the Fig. 1 The total potential energy of any molecule is the sum of simple allowing for bond stretch- ing, bond angle bending, bond twisting, van der Waals interactions and electrostatics. Many prop- properties of any molecular system from a erties of a biomolecules can be simulated with such an empirical energy function. simple potential energy function. He ? Group 2001 Nature Publishing believed that these methods should be applied to protein and nucleic acid macro- molecules. I arrived in Israel in October, dition of Lab Talks. These talks by mem- interact closely with both Crick and Aaron 1967 and set to work programming the bers of the three divisions at the Klug and so I was exposed to the wonders consistent force field under the supervi- Laboratory of Molecular Biology at that of molecular and structural biology. sion of Lifson and his Ph.D.