OCT 30, 2014 1:30 PM PDT

Structural Pathways of Cancer

Speaker
  • Ruth Nussinov, PhD

    Head, Computational Structural Biology Group, Senior Investigator, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute
    BIOGRAPHY

Abstract

Structural pathways are important. They are essential to the understanding of how oncogenic mutations work and to figuring out alternative parallel pathways in drug resistant mutants. Structural pathways also help to understand the inter-relationship among linked phenomena, as in the case of inflammation and cancer. Cell biology provides a global overview of the behavior of the cell, tissue and the organism under different sets of conditions; the structures of single proteins and their coherent interactions provide insight into the dynamic changes in the proteins, such as those taking place through post-translational modifications, binding events and mutations, and into their interactions. Nonetheless, beyond the challenging construction of structural pathways, there is also a need to obtain a mechanistic insight into single proteins, their modifications, interactions and broadly, their changing landscapes. Why is insight into the dynamic landscape of single proteins important? Perceiving proteins. behavior can help to forecast allosteric transitions, and regulation, and it can help relate oncogenic mutations to their constitutive consequences. The talk will largely focus on structural pathways related to cancer, and oncogenic mutations mapped on these to figure out their mechanisms. These are some of the ways through which computational structural biology can help cancer research.


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OCT 30, 2014 1:30 PM PDT

Structural Pathways of Cancer



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