Course Description

This course is directed to all students and researchers who perform - or plan to perform in the future - quantitative measurements of molecular interactions (the "binding" of molecules) in biochemistry or molecular biology. Given a postulated molecular mechanism, the goal of such experiments is to determine the overall strength of molecular binding (as measured by equilibrium constants), and also the rate of binding (the "kinetics") as measured by rate constants.

Current standard methods for the determination of equilibrium constants and rate constants have many drawbacks, because they are based on a large number of simplifying assumptions - imposed by the classical algebraic mathematical formalism. In this course, we will depart from the traditional algebraic methods of data analysis and avoid using complicated mathematical equations. Instead, we will let the computer handle all the mathematics for us, so we can focus entirely on the biology. This is made possible by using advanced numerical methods of data analysis.

Students will actively learn how to use the academic freeware software package DynaFit for symbolic modeling of arbitrary biochemical mechanisms.

Download DynaFit for MS Windows with pre-installed license

Download this ZIP Archive

Extract the ZIP file while preserving the directory structure. Navigate into the newly created directory DynaFit4 and click on the DynaFit icon. The license file specific to this course is already pre-installed.

Students interested in installing DynaFit on a Mac OS X computer can do so while following the usual procedure:

• Download the Mac OS X version.
• Request an academic license file.

• Photos from a previous isntallments of the BKEB course