Paper detail

Sequence-Structure Relationship in Proteins: a Computational Analysis of Proteins that Differ in Sequence but Share the Same Fold

Mapping between sequence and structure is currently an open problem in structural biology. Despite many experimental and computational efforts it is not clear yet how the structure is encoded in the sequence. Answering this question may pave the way for predicting a protein fold given its sequence. My doctoral studies have focused on a particular phenomenon relevant to the protein sequence-structure relationship. It has been observed that many proteins having apparently dissimilar sequences share the same native fold. The phenomenon of mapping many divergent sequences into a single fold raises the question of which positions along the sequence are important for the conservation of fold and function in dissimilar sequences. Detecting those positions, and classifying them according to role can help understand which elements in a sequence are important for maintenance of structure and/or function. In the course of my doctoral research I have attempted to discover and characterize those positions.