Title: The protein folding problem: An optimization approach

Biography:

Abdellah Salhi is a Professor of Operational Research in the Department of Mathematical Science of Essex University, UK. He has obtained his PhD in Interior-Point Methods from the University of Aston in Birmingham, UK. His research interests are in the design, analysis, implementation and application of OR algorithms. He has led a number of research projects, and contributes to the ESRC funded Business and Local Government Data Research Centre. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers.

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 ITIHSILDWI EDNLESPLSL EKVSERSGYS KWHLQRMFKK ETGHSLQYI RSRKMTEIAQ KLKESNEPIL YLAERYGFES QQTLTRFKN YFDVPPHKYR MTNMQGESRF LHPLNHYNS MTMSRRNTDA. The objective 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.