Function SIG Meetings:

Function-SIG 2019 will be held on Monday, July 22, 2019 as part of ISMB/ECCB 2019 in Basel, Switzerland.

Important Dates:

Function-SIG 2019 Keynote Speaker

Lucy Colwell
Google AI Research and Cambridge University

Title: Using evolutionary sequence variation to build predictive models of protein structure and function.
Abstract: The evolutionary trajectory of a protein through sequence space is constrained by its function. A central challenge across the biological sciences is to predict the functional properties of a protein from its sequence, and thus (i) discover new proteins with specific required functionality and (ii) better understand the functional effect of changes within protein coding genes. The explosive growth in the number of available protein sequences raises the possibility of using the natural variation present in homologous protein sequences to infer these constraints and thus identify residues that control different protein phenotypes. Because in many cases phenotypic changes are controlled by more than one amino acid, the mutations that separate one phenotype from another may not be independent, requiring us to build models that take into account the correlation structure of the data. Models that have this feature are capable of (i) inference of residue pair interactions accurate enough to predict all atom 3D structural models; and predictions of (ii) binding interactions between different proteins and (iii) accurate annotation of sequence domains as far as 80% distinct from the training set.
Speaker Bio: Lucy Colwell is a lecturer in the Chemistry department at Cambridge University, and a Research Scientist at Google Applied Science. She completed her PhD in applied mathematics at Harvard University and spent time as a member of the systems biology group at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton NJ before taking up her faculty position at Cambridge. Her research focuses on using large datasets to build predictive models in chemistry and biochemistry.