Fabien Huard, a PhD Research Student within the Department of Statistics has won the Hilary Booth Prize for best oral presentation by a student at the Bioinfosummer 2005 ICE-EM Summer Symposium in Bioinformatics.

ICE-EM is International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics. The Summer Symposium in Bioinformatics was held 28/11/2005-02/12/2005 in Canberra.

 Abstract :
It is acknowledged in the literature that proteins can fold rapidly as they are being translated, so-called “cotranslational folding”. We explore the effects of following a sequential route to the final fold. We do this using simple HP lattice models, and place the models under kinetic control. We compare the conformations obtained sequentially with the global ground states of designing sequences (sequences with a unique ground state of energy). We find differences, as nature is not always capable of pushing a partially folded protein back over a sufficiently large energy barrier. We investigate the effect of changing the energy barrier, and find that the sequential ground state gets closer to the global ground state as it increases. We also find that cotranslationality favours local interaction.

Contact: Skaidy Gulbis

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