[Colloq] PhD Thesis Proposal - Tomorrow - 12noon, Wenxu Tong

[Rachel Kalweit]

College of Computer and Information Science
presents a PhD Thesis Proposal by:
Wenxu Tong

Title:
Using the POOL method with THEMATICS for protein active site
prediction


Tuesday, November 7, 2006
12:00pm
366 West Village H

Abstract:

Protein active site prediction is a very important problem in 
bioinformatics.  THEMATICS is a simple and effective method based on the 
special electrostatic properties of ionizable residues to make the 
prediction from protein structure alone.  The process involves 
distinguishing titration curves with perturbed shape from normal ones 
and it is subtle in many cases.  We propose Partial Order Optimal 
Likelihood (POOL), a novel method, to estimate for each residue the 
probability that it lies in an active site.  This method makes use of 
prior monotonicity assumptions on the multidimensional feature space and 
leads to a convex optimization problem.  The goal of this research is to 
build a good learning system to automate protein active site prediction 
using a combination of THEMATICS and other potentially useful features.

Thesis advisor:  Ronald J. Williams
Committee: Javed A. Aslam
            Robert Futrelle
            Mary J. Ondrechen