Theoretical Studies On The Dynamic Aspects Of Macromolec

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In this reporting period, papers dealing with the following projects appeared in print or are in press: (1)The kinetics of reversible diffusion influenced reactions (2) Asymptotic relaxation of reversible bimolecular chemical reactions (3) The concentration dependance of the diffusion controlled steady state rate constant (4)The effects of chain stiffness on the dynamics of loop formation in polypeptides and (5) the statistics of transitions in single molecule kinetics. The first three papers deal with various aspects of the role of diffusion in chemical reaction dynamics. The first paper is the culmination of a project started over ten years ago. For all practical purposes it solves the problem of calculating the time course of reversible diffusion influenced reations with arbitrary stoichiometry. In the coming years we hope to collaborate with experimetallist to analyze their kinetic data using our theory. The fourth paper is a collaboration with the Eaton-Hofrichter group on the kinetics of contact formation in polypeptides. This is an elementary step in protein folding and consequently of great current interest. My contibution was to develop the theoretical framework that was used to analyse their experiments.The final paper deals with the theory required to interpret fluorescence resonance energy transfer experiments on protein folding. In these experiments the number of photons emitted by a donor and an acceptor are monitoried. These contain structural information because the efficiency of energy transfer between tne donor and acceptor depend on the distance between them. Given an arbitrary kinetic scheme we showed how to calculate the probability distribution of number of photons emitted during a fixed time window. This work should prove useful in exracting the underlying kinetic mechanism from experiments.