Er was eens… een eiwitpaar
(English summary below) Co-evolutieprincipe helpt bij opheldering 3D-eiwitstructuren Als het oppervlak van een eiwit evolueert, moeten eiwitten die er interactie mee vertonen dezelfde kant op evolueren om te blijven ‘passen’. Dit ‘co-evolutieprincipe’ vergemakkelijkt het voorspellen van de 3D-structuur van eiwitparen aan de hand van hun aminozuursequenties, betogen Utrechtse en Amerikaanse onderzoekers in het onlinetijdschrift eLife. Zo’n voorspelling […]
Lecture by Nobel Prize laureate, Michael Levitt on Dec 11th 2014
Last year’s Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry Michael Levitt, professor of Structural Biology of Stanford University, gives a lecture at Utrecht University on December 11th at 16.00 hrs. Together with the two other laureates, he successfully developed methods that combined quantum and classical mechanics to calculate the courses of chemical reactions using computers. In his lecture […]
A common virus discovered in human gut metagenomes
Odds are, there’s a virus living inside your gut that has gone undetected by scientists for hundreds, and possibly hundreds of thousands, of years. A new study led by Utrecht Bioinformatics Center scientist Dr. Bas E. Dutilh has found that more than half the world’s population is host to a newly described virus, named crAssphage. […]
UBC kick-off symposium was a great success
On September 15th 2014, the UBC celebrated it’s kick-off with a symposium. The UBC was overwhelmed by the enthusiastic registrations for this symposium. Where we at first estimated that about 100-130 people would attend, about 200 people registered and came to listen to four great talks given by the invited speakers. We want to thank […]
Evolution of Functional Diversification within Quasispecies
According to quasispecies theory, high mutation rates limit the amount of information genomes can store (Eigen’s Paradox), whereas genomes with higher degrees of neutrality may be selected even at the expenses of higher replication rates (the “survival of the flattest” effect). Introducing a complex genotype to phenotype map, such as RNA folding, epitomizes such effect […]