TITLE:

ON THE ERROR-CONTROL MECHANISM OF GENETIC PROCESSES (No. 60)

DATE:

Friday, November 12th, 2004

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 214

SPEAKER:

Bane Vasic, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Arizona

ABSTRACT:

Living beings are characterized by their unique information storage and processing ability. The theory of code analysis and storage has a firm theoretical foundation in the area of discrete mathematics and communications, but almost no attempt was made so far to investigate the genetic sequences within this setting. Recent years have witnessed a great deal of research in computational molecular biology, trying to bridge the large gap between genetics and information theory. The goal of this talk is to propose how to approach problems in genetics from the perspective of coding theory and narrow the currently existing rift from the opposite direction. The talk will focus on the characteristics of the genetic error-correcting mechanism and its possible connection to codes on graphs. Codes on graphs and iterative decoding represent recent conceptual advances in communication theory, and their close relationship to neural networks, self-organizing systems and spin glasses makes them universal models for a wide variety of phenomena. It seems plausible that the similarity between interactions of genes within regulatory systems, modeled by Boolean networks with sparse connectivity, and iterative decoding on graphs is not accidental; hence, this new development in coding theory could be utilized to provide partial information about the intricate and multifaceted error-correction mechanisms of the genome and its relationship to the gene regulatory network. The theory of structured Boolean networks, attractor and graph sensitivity analysis will be used for infering the gene network structure, its error-correcting potential as well as its operational influence on disease development and classification.

HOST:

Roxana Smarandache

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