Bioinformatics Seminar
Time:
Venue: Na
27 June 2017
NaReconstructing ancestral sequences to explain and engineer biological diversity
Mikael BodenUniversity of Queensland
Sequencing technology are driving the recovery of the extant portion of the universe of biological sequences and amplify the power of phylogenetic analyses. Ancestral sequence reconstruction is becoming a tool not only for investigating determinants of biological function and structure but also for engineering new genes based on ancient ones ; which blend predicted mutations in ways inspired from ; but possibly never tried by nature. This talk will resurrect some textbook bioinformatics ; which is then put to use in novel ways. Aside from the sheer number of sequences that need to be processed ; evolutionarily remote homologs are likely to manifest a range of changes that are poorly accounted for by present techniques. Along the way ; the talk will introduce two protein families for which ancestors were reconstructed and experimented with. The ancestral cytochrome P450 class 3 is estimated to have existed about 400 million years ago and we think it had twice the thermostability of those we see today.;Davis Auditorium
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