Bioinformatics and protein engineering; presenting a few applications employed in our labs

Abstract

Bioinformatics uses various algorithms and methods to explorer huge amount of biological data in order to help us to understand biological mechanisms. In our labs research groups use bioinformatics tools to investigate and understand why some biological processes are working and what are the most important features contributing to their functions. Of special importance to our researchers are some enzymes and proteins responsible for salinity and drought stresses and thermostability. Different approaches have been employed but they can be classified as follows: a. statistical analyses to understand the significant differences among normal and desired proteins (halophilic or thermostable), b. feature selection algorithms to define the most important features contributing to desired protein activities, c. neural network modelings and tools to train and test different networks in order to correlate between features and protein characteristics and use these networks to predict desired abilities. The results of some research groups have been presented briefly here.