Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY-2000

Jacobson, Matthew P, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for 2000. The research and training plan is in the area of Molecular Biophysics and is entitled "Systematic Evaluation of Algorithms/Models for Protein Structure Prediction Using a Database of Cyclic Oligopeptide NMR Data". While many computational algorithms and models exist for simulation of protein folding, there is a distinct need for statistical measures of their accuracy and efficiency. This project assembles a database of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) data of cyclic oligopeptides. These are proteins which are small enough to be computationally tractable but retain key features of protein structure and thus allow analysis of intermolecular and intramolecular forces as well as sampling algorithms for identifying stable conformations. Algorithms whose accuracy have been validated through this research are then employed to predict the structure of previously uncharacterized cyclic peptides.