Biography
Biography: Abdellah Salhi
Abstract
A protein is a sequence of amino-acids which forms a long and thin string-like molecule. This string twists and turns to fold into a ball that is suspended within the gel-like cell cytoplasm, for instance. Different proteins fold differently. Moreover, folding is consistent with a protein giving it a specific ball shape which determines its function. This is one of the most prominent cases where form dictates function. Predicting the 3D structure into which a sequence of amino-acids will fold is important. In fact, that is the so called Protein Folding Problem or PFP. To illustrate, we are given the sequence of amino-acids like ITIHSILDWI EDNLESPLSL EKVSERSGYS KWHLQRMFKK ETGHSLQYI RSRKMTEIAQ KLKESNEPIL YLAERYGFES QQTLTRFKN YFDVPPHKYR MTNMQGESRF LHPLNHYNS MTMSRRNTDA; which is very difficult to predict, if it looks like this. PFP is really three problems: (1) The folding code, (2) Structure prediction, and (3) The folding speed and mechanism. The object of this talk is to look at the problem of structure prediction, formulate it and highlight the difficulties and recent advances in its solution with some ideas for further research.