Understanding intrinsically disordered proteins using bioinformatics approaches and laboratory experiments
The Central Dogma of molecular biology is that DNA sequence determines messenger RNA sequence, which in turn determines amino acid sequence. A given amino acid sequence then determines one, specific, unique 3 dimensional structure. The folded 3D structure is prerequisite for protein function. One of the central, unsolved problems in molecular biology is the code by which a given amino acid sequence determines a 3D fold. This is called the "protein folding problem.
Many proteins and protein regions fail to fold into 3D structure and yet carry out biological function. Dr. Dunker uses both computational and experimental methods to discover sequence-function relationships for these intrinsically disordered proteins and regions. Computational methods include data mining and various neural network and support vector machine predictors.
