Center for Bioinformatics at KU

As part of our public Seminar Series
http://bioinformatics.ku.edu/seminars

May 6, Tue 2008
11:00 am, MRB 200 Conference Room

Dr. Jie Liang

Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Chicago,

Detecting geometric pattern and evolutionary signal from protein structure for understanding biological functions and predicting protein-protein interaction surfaces

Proteins are the working molecules of a cell. Three dimensional structures of proteins are the basis of their biological functions. Although often thought to be as tight as solids, closer examination based on geometric computation reveals that proteins contain interesting packng patterns, including numerous voids and pockets. We discuss the origin of the existence of voids and pockets, and illustrate how to distinguish those voids and pockets involved in important biological functions such as binding from those formed by random chance. We further discuss how to analyze their evolutionary patterns for predicting protein functions. Finally, we describe a new approach for developing models and tools for predicting protein-protein interaction surfaces.

(please visit http://www.uic.edu/~jliang for further information).