A project implemented by Ogün Adebali, member of Sabancı University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, is entitled to support within the framework of TÜBİTAK 3501 Career Development Project.
The project entitled “A New Phylogeny-based Co-evolution Algorithm and Applications” will be implemented by a group led by Ogün Adebali. A post-doctoral researcher with mathematics background will also work within the framework of the project.
Talking about the goals of the project, Ogün Adebali said the following: “The fact that functional amino acids of proteins mutate during the evolutionary processes and are in constant change to maintain their functionality requires that the other amino-acids that are in interaction with the former change in a way to offset such a change. Only those interacting amino acids pairs or multiples with the right combination can adapt to the environment in evolutionary processes and be selected while incompatible pairs are eliminated during evolution. Amino acid sequences that manage to survive are those that managed to adapt to environmental conditions. By making use of this basic biological knowledge, we will develop a new algorithm to determine co-evolving amino acids of proteins”.
Mentioning the importance of the project, Adebali said the following: “Increasing the accuracy of computational prediction of co-evolving amino acids will provide benefits in basic sciences and clinical research. In basic sciences, understanding the protein folding and determining the interface in which protein-protein interactions occur will play a role in understanding molecular events. Evaluation of co-evolving amino-acids in computational diagnosis of genetic diseases is considered an important factor that can increase success of pathogenicity predictability of mutations”.