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From Amy Keating:<br><br>
APPLIED MATHEMATICS COLLOQUIUM (Joint with Bioinformatics
Seminar)<br><br>
FOLDING ALGORITHMS FOR PROTEIN STRUCTURE PREDICTION<br><br>
DATE: MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2004<br>
TIME:<x-tab> </x-tab> 4:15 PM<br>
LOCATION: Building 2, Room 105<br><br>
Reception at 3:30 PM in Building 2, Room 349.<br><br>
Guest: PHILIP BRADLEY, University of Washington<br><br>
ABSTRACT:<br>
To reach their biologically active state, newly synthesized
proteins<br>
spontaneously fold from an extended, linear conformation into a
compact<br>
three-dimensional structure.<br><br>
This remarkable self-assembly process, protein folding, is guided by
the<br>
amino acid sequence of the protein to a unique final state. Despite<br>
several decades of intensive study the process by which sequence<br>
determines structure is still not well understood; in particular it is
not<br>
currently possible to predict a protein's native three-dimensional<br>
structure given only its sequence. Recently, however, a class
of<br>
prediction algorithms based on protein fragment assembly have made<br>
considerable headway towards the goal of generating low-resolution<br>
structure predictions. In this talk I will introduce the protein
folding<br>
problem, describe these new algorithms, highlight their strengths
and<br>
weaknesses, and discuss current research directed at improving the<br>
reliability and accuracy of their predictions.<br><br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<b>Dawn Davis Loring<br>
</b>Communications Coordinator<br>
Computational and Systems Biology (CSBi)<br>
Phone: (617) 324-0150 <br>
Fax: (617) 324-0081<br><br>
<font size=1>Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
77 Massachusetts Avenue<br>
Building 68 - Room 459<br>
Cambridge, MA 02139</font></html>