Speaker:

Dr. L Aravind

Senior Investigator

National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), NIH

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/staff/aravind/

 

Seminar:

Friday, April 26th, 2019 at 11:30AM | 1400 BPS

Enzymes in an arms race

 

 

Research in my group has aimed at unraveling the interactions between evolutionary forces and various molecular constraints in shaping the diversity of biochemical function and biological form. We have used a variety of computer-aided approaches on datasets that chiefly include protein and nucleic sequences, protein structures, and different abstractions of biological systems (e.g. networks) to glean new insights in this regard. Conflicts are a pervasive aspect of all levels of biological organization: within a genome there are conflicts between mobile selfish elements, which possess the capacity for furthering themselves at the cost of the rest of the genome. At the molecular level these conflicts are primarily mediated by the production and deployment of “chemical armaments”. These molecules span an entire size spectrum from the diffusible small molecules (e.g. antibiotics) to some of the largest proteins in the biological world (secreted bacterial toxins or effectors). These, together with the molecular systems providing immunity against them, may be collectively termed “biological conflict systems”. My group has been using comparative genomics and sequence analysis to discover such molecules and characterize their biochemical diversity. We are increasingly realizing the importance of these systems as “laboratories” to understand protein evolution: given that the action of such molecular “weaponry” and the immunity mechanisms to counter them are of paramount importance to the fitness of an organism, they are under intense selection. Hence, we can observe evolution in the “fast-track” with these molecules and can empirically recover various rules relating to molecular evolution. This effect is most apparent in enzymes which are deployed in offensively and defensively in biological conflicts. I shall discuss examples of such that have allowed new biochemical discoveries.

 

 

Note: Dr. Piermarocchi's seminar on "Spin Glass Models of Cancer Cells"  will be rescheduled at a later date.

 

 

Lerena R. Heintzelman

Department of Physics & Astronomy

Michigan State University

567 Wilson Rd. Room 3261

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-884-5513