Macromolecular Structure & Structural Genomics

ISU faculty are using multiple, complementary approaches to understand macromolecular structure/function relationships. Several are utilizing the wealth of information obtained by extrapolated patterns of evolutionary change. One project builds upon the work of faculty who have interests in virus and transposable element biology, particularly the many protein and protein-nucleic acid interactions that regulate virus or transposon gene expression and replication. Participants in this research project are trying to discern molecular functional and structural information from natural variability observed among viral or transposable element populations. Other studies aim at improving structure determination by crystallography and NMR. Major efforts are in applications of datamining and machine learning to structure predictions. Recently many faculty are now engaging in bio-energy projects, in particular for the determination of the structures of plant cells walls, by applying many methods in coordination to the same set of samples.