Biocomplexity Institute hosts top researchers to explore the way science looks at DNA
The more researchers learn about DNA, the more they learn how much is still left to discover about the foundation of life — how you will survive, reproduce, develop.
Researchers at the Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech continue to reveal new information beyond sequence alignment to expose the impact of structure on the building blocks of life.
On Oct. 16-17, the institute will host a groundbreaking symposium, Beyond Sequence Alignment, to further investigate the possibilities of developing new sequence-to-structure analytics. Leading-edge scientists from across the country will travel to the Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech to analyze new ways to assess information contained in DNA sequences. The universal transcription into folded RNA may suggest that sequence and structure have to be considered together in the context of information inference.
Specifically, the symposium will explore prospects for novel notions of sequence similarity, using structure as well as sequence, and consider the possible impact on instrumentation and analytical infrastructure should important shape/sequence analytic paradigms emerge.
The symposium will host presentations by high-impact researchers:
- Michael Waterman, university professor; USC Associates Chair in Natural Sciences; and professor of biological sciences, computer science and mathematics, University of Southern California.
- Shrikant Mane, professor of genetics; director, MBB Keck Biotech Laboratory; director, Yale Center for Genome Analysis, Yale School of Medicine.
- Karissa Sanbonmatsu, Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
- Roger Chang, Pamela Silver Laboratory, Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School.
- Christopher Barrett, executive director and professor, Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech; professor, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech.
- Christian Reidys, director and professor, Mathematical Biocomplexity Laboratory, Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech; professor, Department of Mathematics, Virginia Tech; Thermo Fisher Scientific Fellow in Advanced Systems for Information Biology.
The symposium intends to challenge and initiate a high-level exchange of progressive ideas and forward-thinking research in order to strengthen and advance the analyses of functional, information-bearing mechanisms of DNA and RNA.
Be a part of the conversation. Join our symposium live on The Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech Facebook page. We will bring you the latest on this innovative research starting at 9 a.m. Monday, Oct. 16, 2017.
This symposium was made possible through the generous support of Thermo Fisher Scientific and Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC.
