Overall Objective:
To create innovative computational and visualization methods and professional quality, easy to use software tools, and apply these for solving a wide range of genomic and molecular recognition problems within the complex sequence->structure->function triad. Applications include gene characterization and interpretation, drug design, variation in drug response due to genetic factors, protein engineering, biomaterials design, bioremediation, and prediction of function from sequence and structure.
Specific Aims:
- Design, build, integrate, and disseminate computational and visualization methods and software tools for sequence analysis, bioinformatics, structural biology, and protein chemistry;
- Apply these methods and tools to problems in medicinal chemistry and molecular biology with particular emphasis on the studies of molecular interactions, drug design, variation in drug efficacy, and protein engineering;
- Provide access to, training in, and assistance with these methods and tools for scientists whose research projects will benefit;
- Disseminate as documented source code the software developed at the resource to allow others to use our software both for research applications and as a starting point and training tool for their own developments.
Potential Impact:
The potential impact of the work of the RBVI on human health and disease was perhaps best described by Eric Jakobsson in his presentation of the 2004 NIH Roadmap on Computing...
"The success of computational biology is shown by the fact that computation [and, of course, visualization] has become integral and critical to modern biomedical research. Because computation is integral to biomedical research, its deficiencies have become significant rate limiting factors in the rate of progress of biomedical research."
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