Speaker: Prof. Alex Bronstein, Department of Computer Science, Technion

Title: Silently shaping structure

Abstract: The central dogma of biology suggests a unidirectional flow of information from DNA, to messenger RNA, to amino acid sequence, to the final folded protein structure that eventually defines its function. And yet, 18 of the 20 amino acids are translated from non-unique, synonymous, genetic codons. Often overlooked as an inconsequential redundancy of the cellular protein translation machinery (the ribosome), there is actually a wealth of evidence to suggest that synonymous codons are far from “silent”, as they are so often termed. In this talk, I will present my recent adventure into computational structural biology. I will show rigorous methods for calculating and comparing codon-specific distributions of local protein backbone dihedral angles and will demonstrate that there exists a significant statistical dependence between codon identity and backbone torsion of the translated amino acid. Although these findings cannot pinpoint the causal direction of this dependence, I will discuss the vast biological implications should coding be shown to directly shape protein conformation and demonstrate the usefulness of this method as a tool for probing associations between codon usage and protein structure.

Joint work with Dr. Ailie Marx and Aviv Rosenberg.

Bio: Alex Bronstein is a professor and a vice dean at the Department of Computer Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology where he holds the Dan Broida Academic Chair and heads the Technion Center for Intelligent Systems. Alex specializes in signal and image processing, imaging, machine vision, and learning. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the recipient of four grants from the European Research Council (ERC). In addition to his academic activities, Alex is a serial entrepreneur and investor with a record of five startup companies in his domain of expertise.

https://tau-ac-il.zoom.us/j/85117041786?pwd=THNNZWorSFRTUGxVTTU0am1yOVBBQT09

Zoom URL: https://tau-ac-il.zoom.us/j/85117041786?pwd=THNNZWorSFRTUGxVTTU0am1yOVBBQT09

Meeting ID: 851 1704 1786

Passcode: TAUEESYS