Protein coevolution and the viral world
Alessandra Carbone
26 January 2017, 14:30 Salle/Bat : 465/PCRI-N
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Activités de recherche : Structural biology
Résumé :
A fundamental question in computational biology is the extraction of evolutionary information from DNA sequences. Here, we consider protein sequences and structures, and describe how important biological information on protein-protein binding sites and on mechanical and allosteric properties of proteins can be extracted. Among different examples, we shall present a computational approach to protein-protein interactions that we developed within a project on protein network reconstruction for viral genomes. We show how the full interaction network of proteins coded in Hepatitis C Virus genome can be reconstructed at a residue/domain resolution and briefly introduce recent experimental work demonstrating HCV fusion as a unique mechanism. This work provides a proof of concept for a wider exploration of viral protein mediated-processes and highlights coevolution as a valuable tool for guiding the design of viral inhibitors.