[QSB-grads] Math Bio Speaker: Prof David Ardell (9:30 - 10:30am, Wednesday, ACS 362B)

[Suzanne Sindi]

Dear Mathematical Biology Enthusiasts,

Tomorrow, our seminar speaker will Professor David Ardell:

David Ardell, Professor Molecular and Cellular Biology
Title: Decoding the Cellular Language of tRNA-protein Interactions
When: 9:30 - 10:30am, Wednesday November 6
Where: ACS 362B

If you are interested in being on our mailing list, you can sign yourself up here: https://tinyurl.com/yygy45aw

In addition, the full Fall 2019 schedule for our Math Bio Seminar is now posted on the Applied Math website (https://appliedmath.ucmerced.edu/node/52).

I encourage you to take a look at what we have planned for the semester and to feel free to suggest future speakers and topics for next Semester.

Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow morning.

Best,

Suzanne


Abstract: Cells compute their phenotypes through diffusion-driven assortative interactions of biomolecules such as RNAs and proteins. I will give a condensed overview in four parts describing our research on the evolving structural code governing tRNA-protein interactions. In the first part I describe first steps in targeting new drugs against the tRNA-protein interaction network in eukaryotic pathogens. The development of chemotherapeutic drugs against eukaryotic pathogens is especially challenging. We used an information criterion, rather than a conservation criterion, to bioinformatically predict Class-Informative Features (CIFs) of tRNAs in humans and in eight clades of trypanosomes, and found that tRNA CIFs are broadly conserved over approximately 250 million years of trypanosome evolution, and show data that parasite-specific interactions are “druggable”. I will then describe research into factors contributing to relatively rapid evolution of CIFs, and the application of CIFs to the construction of phyloclassifiers of genomes. I will close describing more mathematical and conceptual aspects of our theory applying coding theory to explain structural aspects of tRNA-protein interactions. Here I will describe our new rugged fitness landscape model and discuss its implications for the origins of the tRNA-interaction network.

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