Medical Biotechnology

Computational Biology & Bioinformatics

Groups in Trieste, New Delhi and Cape Town work on Bioinformatics as an interdisciplinary research field combining computer science methods and statistical / mathematical modelling to analyse biological measurement data.

Highlights

In 2021 the Computational Biology Group collaborated with several groups in the analysis of NGS data sets including ICGEB groups (Chakraborty et al., Blood 2021; Ramos et al Cell Rep 2021; Fantinatti et al BMC Genomics, 2021; Fryk et al EBiomedicine 2021; Bez et al Env Microbiol 2021). The group is also taking part in two ICGEB Collaborative Research Programme (CRP) grants which started in 2022 and has initiated research collaboration with a private company on the analysis and interpretation of microbiome data sets. The research group has been very productive: examples include studies of SARS Cov-2 spike protein structure and dynamics (ACS Chem Neurosci 2021; 3 Biotech, 2022; J Biomol Struct Dyn 2022; Front genet 2022) as well as structural and inhibitory insights into other proteins such as human methyltransferase (J Mol Struct Dyn 2021), of the Tau tubulin kinase involved in neurodegeneration (J Cell Biochem 2021) and of a Plasmodium falciparum serine protease (Molecules 2021).