BIO Seminar: SNPs, Protein, Capsids: All about drug discovery

BIO Seminar: SNPs, Protein, Capsids: All about drug discovery

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Speaker: Özlem Taştan

Title: SNPs, Proteins, Capsids: All about drug discovery

Date/Time: February 21, 2018  /  13:40-14:30

Place: FENS L067

 
Abstract: Structural bioinformatics focuses on the identification and analysis of structure, dynamics and interaction of biological macromolecules in 3D space. While doing so, it aims to make connections between sequence – structure and function of macromolecules. Information on structure is particularly important, especially for structure based drug discovery process. In this presentation, I would like to present different aspects of our research related to computational drug discovery and tool development. The talk will be divided into three sections; SNPs, Proteins and Capsids. In each section the use of these topics for drug discovery purposes will be discussed, and examples from our recent publications will be given. Examples will include analysis of the effects of non-synonymous SNPs in cardiovascular disease related proteins renin and angiotensinogen; hit identification in falcipains for malarial research; identification of dynamic conformations and allosteric binding sites that are not available from crystal structures for antibiotic development via analysis of E. coli heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70); and conservation and normal mode analysis of picornavirus capsids for drug and vaccine design.

Short bio-sketch of Özlem Taştan Bishop:
Özlem received her BSc degree in Physics from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. Then she moved to the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the same University for her MSc degree. She obtained her PhD from Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics and Free University, Berlin, Germany in 2003. While doing her PhD, Özlem became interested in structural biology, and during her postdoctoral positions (Texas University, USA; University of Western Cape and University of Pretoria, South Africa) she gained experience in structural bioinformatics as well as structural biology. In October 2009, Özlem took up a senior lecturer position at Rhodes University, South Africa. She initiated one-year MSc programme in bioinformatics by coursework and research thesis in 2011, and established Research Unit in Bioinformatics (RUBi) in 2013. She has graduated 27 MSc and PhD students since she joined Rhodes University. Özlem’s broad research interest is comparative genomics and structural bioinformatics.
Contact: Deniz Sezer