At Vilnius University, a Lecture Will be Delivered by Member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, Professor Johan Åqvist

Prof. Johan Åqvist. Personal archive photo

On 15th November (Friday), Vilnius University will host a distinguished guest – Swedish biochemist, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, former Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, and Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at Uppsala University, Johan Åqvist. The prominent biochemist will give a lecture at the Vilnius University Life Sciences Centre (Saulėtekio Ave. 7, Room R401) at 15:00 titled “How Enzymes Adapt to the Cold?”

Enzymes from ectothermic species adapted to cold environments are able to maintain surprisingly high catalytic rates at low temperatures, where normal enzymes have lost most of their activity. These cold-adapted enzymes have some characteristic and universal properties that reflect their evolutionary optimization and we will discuss the structural and energetic principles of cold-adaptation. In particular, we will show how the temperature dependence of enzyme reaction rates can be obtained from atomistic computer simulations and how such calculations can shed new light on enzyme evolution in differently adapted species.

Prof. J. Åqvist is a distinguished academic conducting interdisciplinary research in the fields of physical chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, and medicine. He is one of the authors of the Q software package for molecular dynamics. Last year and this year, he was honoured with the Swedish Chemistry Leader Award for his scientific achievements.

Since 2009, Prof. J. Åqvist has been a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announces the Nobel Prize laureates each year. From 2021 to 2023, he served as Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.