Regensburg 2004 – scientific programme
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AKB: Biologische Physik
AKB 40: Evolution and Complex Systems
AKB 40.4: Invited Talk
Thursday, March 11, 2004, 16:00–16:30, H40
Proteins: Structure, Function, and Evolution — •Markus Porto1, Ugo Bastolla2, H. Eduardo Roman3, and Michele Vendruscolo4 — 1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany — 2Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC), 28850 Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain — 3Dipartimento di Fisica and INFN, Università di Milano, Via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano, Italy — 4Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK
In my talk I will discuss very recent theoretical work related to the evolution of proteins. The starting point is to understand the statistical properties of neutral evolution of protein sequences under the requirement that the native state remains thermodynamically stable. As a first result, such study yields the rigidity profile (the amount of local conservation) of a given protein fold, which indicates structural and functional important places. The second central result is the observation of strongly correlated fluctuations in the substitution rate and the resulting lack of self-averaging for certain observables, which is important for instance for bioinformatics applications. Thirdly, a relation between sequence based quantities and protein structure is established, which might provide a different route to protein structure prediction.