EE Seminar: Gilad Poker

~~
Gilad Poker, 
M.Sc. student under the supervision of Prof. Michael Margaliot

Wednesday, January 7, 2015 at 15:00
Room 011, Kitot Bldg., Faculty of Engineering

Maximizing Protein Translation Rate in the Ribosome Flow Model

Abstract

Translation is an important stage in gene expression. During this stage, macro-molecules called ribosomes, travel along the mRNA strand linking amino-acids together in a specific order to create a functioning protein.
An important question, related to many biomedical disciplines, is how to maximize protein production.
 Indeed, translation is known to be one of the most energy consuming processes in the cell, and it is natural to assume that evolution shaped this process so that it maximizes the protein production rate. If this is indeed so then one can estimate various parameters of the translation machinery by solving an appropriate mathematical optimization problem.
 The same problem also arises in the context of synthetic biology, namely, re-engineer heterologous genes in order to maximize their translation rate in a host organism.
We consider the problem of maximizing the protein production rate using a computational model for translation-elongation called the ribosome flow model (RFM). This model describes the flow of the ribosomes along an mRNA chain of length n using a set of n first-order nonlinear ordinary differential equations.
We show that the steady-state translation rate in the RFM is a strictly concave function of its parameters.
 This means that the problem of maximizing the translation rate under a suitable  constraint  always admits a unique solution, and that this solution can be determined  using highly-efficient algorithms for solving convex optimization problems.
  Furthermore, our analysis shows that the optimal translation rate can be computed based only on the optimal initiation rate and the elongation rate of the codons near the beginning of the ORF.
 

07 בינואר 2015, 15:00 
חדר 011, בניין כיתות חשמל 
אוניברסיטת תל אביב עושה כל מאמץ לכבד זכויות יוצרים. אם בבעלותך זכויות יוצרים בתכנים שנמצאים פה ו/או השימוש
שנעשה בתכנים אלה לדעתך מפר זכויות, נא לפנות בהקדם לכתובת שכאן >>