Description:

NOVEMBER MEETING: Tuesday, November 26, 2024 at 5:20pm (US Central)

LOCATION:
In person: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
600 Foster Steet, Evanston Campus

AGENDA:
5:20pm - Meet and Greet
5:30pm - Talk by Stefan Pate, Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences Program
6:15pm - Q&A

SPEAKER:
Stefan Pate, PhD student, Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences Program, Northwestern University

ABSTRACT:

Tapping Underground Enzymatic Functions to Understand and Direct Metabolic Evolution
Characterizing “underground” functions of enzymes will aid our understanding of basic physiology & evolutionary biology, and will expand our bioengineering capabilities. Underground catalytic functions (1) make metabolic networks robust to loss-of-function mutations that compromise major fluxes, (2) figure prominently into hypotheses on the evolution of metabolic diversity, and (3) permit bioengineers to access novel chemistries with a tractable amount of modification to extant amino acid sequences. I'll share work on a machine learning model that predicts unobserved catalytic functions of enzymes, and  a method designed to efficiently generate multi-enzyme synthesis networks inclusive of predicted catalytic functions.

DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly talks on data science techniques or applications, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Aspiring, beginning, and advanced data scientists are welcome! For more information: http://bit.ly/nico-dsn