Dynamics of proteins and amorphous solids and transport phenomena in proteins.

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Proteins perform a broad variety of tasks in living organisms, including catalysis, transport of electrons, ions and small molecules, conversion and storage of energy, signal transduction, etc. The manifold of possible conformational states of a protein can be described using the concept of the energy landscape. Information on distributions of barriers on the protein energy landscapes is necessary to better understand conformational changes and folding. This information can be obtained by methods of high-resolution optical spectroscopy, among others, as pigment molecules embedded into protein serve as very sensitive probes to structural properties and dynamics of their environment. We also seek to determine the molecular nature of the entities involved in the conformational changes observed in optical experiments.