11:00 AM, Friday, March 15, 2002, 3rd Floor Tower Room

Proteins perform many fundamental functions in living organisms including transport, signaling, catalytic activity etc. Functional properties of proteins depend upon their three-dimensional shape. Experimental determination of protein structure is a lengthy process. On the other hand, protein sequence (the ordered list of amino-acids that make given protein) is often known or easy to determine. The central dogma motivating the search for algorithms that predict protein three-dimensional structure states that protein structure is determined by its sequence and the properties of the medium. In principle, it should be possible to compute protein structure based on it’s sequence. In spite of couple of decades of computational effort this problem, known as protein folding problem, remains unsolved. IBM is in the process pf building a computer dedicated to solving this problem. Will it succeed?

In this talk we will describe challenges that are faced by protein structure prediction algorithms and take a tour over computational approaches to protein folding problem. No molecular biology background is assumed.