Biology

Professor Saraswathi Vishveshwara
Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Network theory has become an excellent method of choice through which biological data are smoothly integrated to gain insights into complex biological problems. Understanding protein

structure, folding, and function has been an important problem, which is being extensively investigated by the network approach. Since the sequence uniquely determines the structure, we have extensively focussed on exploring the networks of non-covalently connected amino acid side chains in proteins.  Further, an integration of network theory with ensembles of equilibrium structures of a single protein or that of a large number of structures from the data bank will be presented to perceive complex phenomena from network perspective.   Challenging problems in structural biology, which have demanded the attention of scientific community for a long time, such as allostery and protein folding will be discussed in detail.