Major
Neuroscience
Anticipated Graduation Year
2022
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Proteins express multi-faceted complexity through their sizes, functional groups, and biological functions. This research develops an algorithmic coding method to assess primary structure complexity. Primary structures are the sequences of amino acids encoded by the genomes of organisms and viruses. The primary structure of a protein determines all the folding and function properties. The focus here is on the archetypal proteins, myoglobin, and lysozyme. Myoglobin is a well-known oxygen transport protein and lysozyme is a hydrolytic enzyme with antibiotic activity. The methodology is universal and applicable to proteins across species, both on record and yet to be discovered. Why is sequence complexity important? The reason is that where it registers extraordinarily high or low, flags are raised about unusual folded structures and chemical functions conferred by evolution. Complexity measures accordingly offer high-throughput screens with applications to directed evolution and antibiotic engineering and development.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Daniel J. Graham, Dr., Chemistry Department
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Assessing the Complexity of Protein Primary Structures Using Gödel-Type Coding
Proteins express multi-faceted complexity through their sizes, functional groups, and biological functions. This research develops an algorithmic coding method to assess primary structure complexity. Primary structures are the sequences of amino acids encoded by the genomes of organisms and viruses. The primary structure of a protein determines all the folding and function properties. The focus here is on the archetypal proteins, myoglobin, and lysozyme. Myoglobin is a well-known oxygen transport protein and lysozyme is a hydrolytic enzyme with antibiotic activity. The methodology is universal and applicable to proteins across species, both on record and yet to be discovered. Why is sequence complexity important? The reason is that where it registers extraordinarily high or low, flags are raised about unusual folded structures and chemical functions conferred by evolution. Complexity measures accordingly offer high-throughput screens with applications to directed evolution and antibiotic engineering and development.