Mathematical Biology Seminar David Goldenberg, Biology, U of Utah Wednesday, March 20, 2019 3:05pm in LCB 225 Disorderly Conduct in a Crowd Abstract: Until the last decade or so, it was generally assumed that proteins, in order to function, must fold into stable three-dimensional structures. Similarly, it has long been assumed (by biochemists, at least) that the behavior of proteins and other biological molecules is essentially the same in vivo and in the dilute in vitro conditions used for most biochemical and biophysical studies. Both of the assumptions have recently come under close scrutiny. It is now recognized that many proteins, or parts of proteins, can be described as being ``intrinsically disordered'', that is they remain unfolded under physiological conditions, and their functions often depend on this disordered state. The cellular environment is now recognized to be very crowded, containing molecular structures with a wide range of sizes, and the effects of this crowding have been studied by experimental, theoretical and computational methods. In this talk, I will describe work directed towards better characterizing the properties of disordered proteins and their behavior in crowded environments.