[bioinfo] Symposium on Protein Evolution and Structure

Dear colleagues,


We are delighted to invite submissions for the ESEB 2015 symposium


[The final deadline is today 12 January !]


"PROTEIN EVOLUTION: STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE".

The symposium will focus on protein evolution in broad terms, including protein conservation and adaptation, detection of positive selection and co-evolution, structural evolution and stability constraints. We welcome submissions integrating studies on protein evolution with biochemistry and functional/structural genomics.

The symposium will take place during the 15th Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) on 10 - 14 August 2015 in Lausanne, Switzerland.

REGISTRATION:
Deadline: 12 January 2015
http://www3.unil.ch/wpmu/eseb2015

INVITED SPEAKERS:
Dan Tawfik, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Richard Goldstein, University College London, UK

SYMPOSIUM DESCRIPTION:
Proteins evolve by the replacement of amino acids (substitutions) or the insertion/deletion of fragments (indels). For the protein, mutations may be deleterious or beneficial, governed by the laws of natural selection. Beneficial mutations increase the fitness of the phenotype and are more likely to become fixed in the genome (positive selection). Proteins are not robust to drastic changes (i.e. important changes in stability) and mutations that favour an adaptive functional change are generally accompanied by other coevolving mutations that insure the integrity of the 3D structure (compensatory effect). All these biophysical properties are paving the way for protein evolution.
Traditionally, there was little if any crosstalk between the fields of protein biophysics, protein structure-function and molecular evolution. The last several years have seen some exciting development in merging these areas to obtain an in-depth understanding of how proteins evolve.
For example, a better understanding of how structural constraints affect protein evolution will greatly help to optimise stochastic models of sequence evolution. The symposium aims at exploring this new synthesis.

Abstracts will be selected for presentation by early March. When submitting your abstract please state your preference (talk, poster) during the submission process.
With questions please contact the symposium organizers:

* Romain Studer (rstuder@ebi.ac.uk)
* Maria Anisimova (maria.anisimova@zhaw.ch)

We are looking forward to seeing you at ESEB 2015!

Romain and Maria


_________________________________

Romain Studer
European Bioinformatics Institute
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, UK

Twitter: @RomainStuder
Blog: http://evosite3d.blogspot.co.uk/

Maria Anisimova
Institute of Applied Simulations
Zurich University of Applied Sciences
Switzerland

Evolutionary Genomics:
Vol 1: http://www.springer.com/biomed/human+genetics/book/978-1-61779-581-7
Vol 2: http://www.springer.com/biomed/human+genetics/book/978-1-61779-584-8