[Colloq] Hiring Talk - Ryan Lilien, Friday, March 24

[Rachel Kalweit]

College of Computer and Information Science Colloquium

Presents a Hiring Talk by:
Ryan Lilien
Dartmouth College

Who will speak on:
Algorithmic and Biological Results in Computational Structural Biology 
and Proteomics

Friday, March 24, 2006
12:00pm
366 West Village H
Northeastern University

Abstract:

With the recent completion of the sequencing of the human genome, 
researchers are racing to determine the correlations between genomic 
sequence and protein expression, the structures and functions of these 
proteins and protein systems, and the molecular derangements present in 
disease.  This talk will discuss several of our recent projects in 
Computational Biology including the development of efficient algorithms 
for (1) modeling of protein flexibility using molecular ensembles for 
drug design and protein design (K*), (2) building a probabilistic 
classifier in a proteomics approach to disease classification employing 
mass-spectrometry of human blood sera (Q5), and (3) improved molecular 
replacement techniques for mac-romolecular structure determination via 
X-ray crystallography (CRANS).

Our K* algorithm was used to redesign the active site of an enzyme in 
the NonRibosomal Peptide Synthetase (NRPS) family as a first step 
towards redesigning nature's enzymatic drug factories.  Redesigned 
enzymes may enable combinatorial biosynthesis of molecular variants on 
known antibiotic scaffolds.  The Q5 algorithm exploits machine learning 
techniques to construct diagnostic classifiers for ovarian and prostate 
cancer and helps to identify biomarkers for these diseases.  The CRANS 
algorithm was instrumental in solving the three-dimensional protein 
structure of Dihydrofolate Reductase Thymidylate Synthase, an enzyme 
performing a key step in deoxynucleotide dTMP production for the 
pathogen Cryptosporidium hominis, exposing it as a potential drug 
target.  In this talk I will present both the algorithmic and biological 
results of these projects.

Host: Jay Aslam

-- 
Rachel Kalweit
Administrative Secretary
College of Computer and Information Science
202 West Village H
Northeastern University
phone: 617-373-2462
fax: 617-373-5121
rachelb at ccs.neu.edu