Advances in computational protein design: Development of more efficient search algorithms and their application to the full-sequence design of larger proteins

Protein design is the art of choosing an amino acid sequence that will fold into a desired structure. Computational protein design aims to quantify and automate this process. In computational protein design, various metrics may be used to calculate an energy score for a sequence with respect to a desired protein structure. An ongoing challenge is to find the lowest-energy sequences from amongst the vast multitude of sequence possibilities. A variety of exact and approximate algorithms may be used in this search.

Geoffrey Hom grew up in California. After completing his Ph.D., Geoff did a postdoc studying the genetics of the disease lupus. Geoff is currently exploring computer programming, with an emphasis on non-profit educational software developed in ActionScript 3.0.