Physics and Astronomy Colloquium
                     Tuesday, April 9, 2002
         4:10 p.m., Room 118 Physics-Astronomy Building
 
             BIOPHYSICS WITH SCANNING PROBE MICROSCOPES
 
                          Stuart Lindsay
                Department of Physics and Astronomy
             Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287
 
 Biophysics serves both as a source of interesting physical problems and
 provides motivation for developing new techniques for biology research.
 As an example of the first type of biophysics, I will discuss our
 attempts to study the electronic properties of molecules designed to
 mimic bacterial photosynthesis.  This led us to the problem of making
 reliable metal-molecule-metal contacts with surprising conclusions about
 some simple molecules.  As an example of the second kind, I will
 describe a study that has the goal of mapping the changes in the
 structure of chromatin (the DNA-protein complex in chromosomes) in
 so-called "promoter" regions responsible for the control of gene
 expression.