Statistics Seminar: Wood -- Protein folding

 An aim of bioinformatics is to assist in determining the role of gene products.  A
first step in this task is to move from the one dimension of the gene to the three
dimensional structure of the protein which it produces - one of the sizeable scientific
challenges of our time.  

Proteins are produced sequentially in a cellular device called the ribosome, a process
known as "translation", well-acknowledged by experimentalists.  Triplets of nucleotides,
known as codons, enter the ribosome and a single amino acid is produced; the resulting
string of amino acids folds to the native, lowest energy structure in a process termed
"cotranslational folding".  

In this seminar three aspects of such folding will be discussed.  First, the
cotranslational folding of simple models will be considered and the properties of
cotranslationally folded proteins examined.  Second, evidence for cotranslational
folding of real proteins will be investigated and thirdly, a cotranslational protein
fold prediction algorithm will be introduced.  

And if you know nothing about proteins, that’s fine.  All you need to know will be
introduced in the seminar.