Biology is rapidly becoming a BIG DATA science, creating exciting opportunities to discover, invent, and to tell stories. In our realm of computational biology, we reconstruct the evolutionary history of proteins, and analyze it in the context of protein structure. This endeavor, aided by computer science and mathematics, links biology with the chemistry and physics of proteins. As we gain insights into how proteins have worked over long time scales, we can use that knowledge to understand the proteins that cause human disease. Here, we present select examples of our research, from BIG DATA projects to cancer-causing proteins to Zika virus.
Joseph Ahrens and Janelle Nunez-Castilla (Jessica Siltberg-Liberles) “Computational Molecular Biology: How Understanding the Past Can Help Us Prepare Us for the Future”