Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY2001

Summa, Christopher M, Palo Alto CA

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY2001. The fellowship supports research and training at the postdoctoral level at the intersection of biology and the informational, computational, mathematical, and statistical sciences. The goal of the fellowship is to provide training to a young scientist in preparation for a career in biological informatics in which research and education will be integrated. There is an increasing need for training in biological informatics at all occupational levels, and it is expected that Fellows trained through these fellowships will play important roles in training of the future workforce. The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled "Ab-initio prediction of membrane protein structure." Membrane proteins which play important roles in cell function are not as well-studied as soluble proteins. This research develops automated or semi-automated computational methods for predicting the structures of integral membrane proteins using publicly available data and constructs an online database of structure predications. In doing so, it brings together information from protein folding theory, the human genome project, and mutagenesis experiments on membrane proteins in a unique way.