Speaker: Dr. Tal Shay
Title: Mapping modularity between dependent biological entities: is gene modularity reflected in protein modularity?
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Abstract:
Genes can be modeled as variable length four characters strings which are composed of functional substrings, corresponding to exons, separated by non-functional substrings, corresponding to introns. During gene editing, non-functional substrings are removed. Alternative ways of editing may result in different edited strings (transcripts). Those transcripts are translated into proteins using a code in which each three characters are translated to one character out of a 20 letters alphabet (amino acids). The protein string is folded into a three-dimensional structure, which is typically composed of modules (domains). Though domain boundaries are slightly enriched for exon boundaries, there is very limited understanding of the mapping (or lack thereof) of the modular gene subunits (exons) and the modular protein subunits (domains).
I will present some thoughts and very preliminary results of our effort to search for such mapping.
Bio:
B.Sc. - 1996-1999, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Departments of Computer Sciences and Life Sciences
M.Sc. - 2001-2003, Weizmann Institute of Science, Departments of Molecular Cell Biology and Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
Advisors: Prof. Zvi Kam and Prof. Achi Brandt
Thesis: Segmentation and tracking of cells in microscope images
Ph.D. - 2004-2008, Weizmann Institute of Science,
Department of Physics of Complex Systems
Advisor: Prof. Eytan Domany
Thesis: From DNA copy number to gene expression: local aberrations, trisomies, and monosomies
2009-2013
Postdoctoral researcher
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Supervisor: Aviv Regev
2014-present
Senior Lecturer, Department of Life Sciences
Joint Appointment, Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
