[Colloquium] Kurban/Dissertation Defense/April 22, 2011

[Margaret Jaffey]

	Department of Computer Science/The University of Chicago

		*** Dissertation Defense ***


Candidate:  Gulriz Kurban

Date:  Friday, April 22, 2011

Time:  10:30 AM

Place:  Ryerson 251

Title:  Computational Analysis of Protein Modular Domain Architectures

Abstract:
This dissertation presents novel computational methods to identify domains in multi-domain protein sequences. 
These methods predict a protein’s modular domain architecture(MDA) from its local alignments with a large set 
of proteins that contain one or more homologous domains. The first method builds a probabilistic model that
partitions the protein positions into domains based on observed alignments, giving us a preliminary prediction 
for the protein's MDA. The second method incorporates the likelihood of switching between domains to improve 
the prediction accuracy. It extends the initial model to take into account the linker propensities for individual amino 
acids in each position and the adjacency of the positions. 
The end product of my research is a tool that facilitates further experimental and 
computational analyses that require the preliminary knowledge of protein domain
positions, such as protein structure determination and functional annotation.

Gulriz's advisor is Prof. Stuart Kurtz

A draft copy of the dissertation will be available soon.

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Margaret P. Jaffey                        		margaret at cs.uchicago.edu
Department of Computer Science		Ry 156
Student Affairs Administrator			(773) 702-6011
The University of Chicago                  	http://www.cs.uchicago.edu
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