Upon invitation of the School of Physical Science and Technology and the Cuiying Honors College, professor Yang Jing, research scientist from Johns Hopkins University, will attend the 34th series of Enlightenment Forum. Attendance is welcome!

Title: Junctional Angle of a Bi-handed Helix

Time: 10:30 a.m. Monday, November 19, 2018

Location: Conference Room 4022, Gezhi Building

Abstract

Helical filaments having sections of reversed chirality are common phenomena in the biological realm. The apparent angle between the two sections of opposite handedness provides information about the geometry and elasticity of the junctional region. The governing differential equations for the local helical axis are developed, and asymptotic solutions of the governing equations are solved by perturbation theory. The asymptotic solutions are compared with the corresponding numerical solutions, and the relative error at second order is found to be less than 1.5% over a range of biologically relevant curvature and torsion values from 0 to 1/2 in dimensionless units.

About Prof. Yang Jing

Yang Jing graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University with a bachelor's degree in boiler design and manufacturing. He received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Connecticut. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. After a postdoctoral degree at Haverford College in the United States, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Ecole NormaleSupérieure in Paris, France. After returning to China, he taught at the Guilin University of Electronic Technology. Currently, he is a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include bacterial migration, biohydrodynamics, cell mechanics, and biophysics. He is the winner of the 2018 Pineapple Science Award for Mathematics.