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Bioinformatics board named
Seven pre-eminent scientists to advise, advance center's research
By JOHN DELLA CONTRADA
Contributing Editor
Seven pre-eminent, world-class scientists in the fields of genomics, chemistry, biophysics, proteomics and computational biology have been named to the Scientific Advisory Board for the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics.
They will help guide and advance the center's research objectives, which will focus on the development of new biological products—including revolutionary new drugs—using powerful supercomputers to interpret data from the Human Genome Project.
The scientists are Charles R. Cantor, chief scientific officer and a member of the board of directors of SEQUENOM, Inc.; John K. Cowell, chair of the Department of Cancer Genetics at Roswell Park Cancer Institute and a professor in the Cellular and Molecular Biology Program at UB's Roswell Park Graduate Division; Herbert Hauptman, Nobel Laureate and president of Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute; Barry Honig, professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University; Eugene V. Koonin, senior investigator with the Evolutionary Genomics Research Group at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) of the National Library of Medicine, a department of the National Institutes of Health; Michael Levitt, professor and chair of the Department of Structural Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Harold Scheraga, George W. and Grace L. Todd Professor of Chemistry Emeritus in the Baker Laboratory of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University.
"Assembly of this prestigious group of scientists is an important milestone in the creation of the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics," said Provost Elizabeth D. Capaldi. "Each of them is internationally known and their involvement in the Center of Excellence will help us achieve and maintain a commanding lead in the science of bioinformatics."
Cantor previously served as professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Biophysics, and director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he was director of the Human Genome Center of the Department of Energy at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
Cowell conducts research on molecular genetics of cancer and cancer predisposition, molecular analysis of neuroblastoma, molecular genetic changes in leukemia, and genetic analysis of brain tumors and breast cancer.
Hauptman is a world-renowned mathematician who pioneered and developed a mathematical method that changed the field of chemistry and opened a new era in research in the determination of molecular structures of crystallized materials.
His current work is concerned with the development of methods for determining molecular structures using X-ray diffraction.
Honig is a biophysicist who specializes in bioinformatics and in developing theoretical methods for analyzing the physical chemical properties of macromolecules. He is noted for innovating methods to compute and display the electrostatic potentials of macromolecules based on their 3D structures.
Koonin's work is concentrated on sequence analysis, protein structure/function analysis and gene identification. His Evolutionary Genomics Research Group has developed computational methods for isolating clusters of orthologous groups—appearances of the same gene in different organisms—across the 40 or so complete genomic sequences now in the public domain.
Levitt is a newly elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is known for his work in computational biology, especially protein folding. His pioneering use of an all-atom potential energy function and Cartesian coordinate energy minimization on an entire protein made molecular dynamics simulations possible. This also led to the popular Jack-Levitt method for refining coordinates against X-ray data.
Levitt also pioneered simulation of protein unfolding in solution, emphasizing qualitative aspects and using film to show protein motion. Primarily focused on proteins, he has contributed to the computational structural biology of DNA and RNA. Using sequence/structure analysis and bioinformatics, he has classified folds in genomic sequences and compared results of sequence alignment with those of structure. He has developed methods to combine distant homology searches with automated modeling.
Scheraga is one of the pioneers of protein folding. His experimental work involves genetic engineering and hydrodynamic, spectroscopic immunochemical and other physicochemical measurements on proteins, synthetic polymers of amino acids and model compounds. His theoretical work involves statistical mechanical studies of aqueous solutions of amino acids and peptides. Much of his research involves the determination of the pathways of folding of proteins, and the mechanism of action of thrombin on fibrinogen, an important reaction in the blood-clotting process.