Our primary research goal is to understand the basic principles of signal transduction. In essence, we want to know how living organisms detect environment signals, transmit this information inside the cell, and trigger an appropriate response. With the proliferation of genomic data, it is increasingly possible to answer these fundamental questions by uncovering the evolutionary history of signaling systems - an approach called evolutionary genomics. How do complex systems evolve? What are the basic building blocks? What are the common and innovative components of different systems? How did they originate? How do they change and why?
Evolutionary genomics is an emerging discipline; therefore we develop and explore new ways of comparative analysis of DNA and protein sequences, protein domains, pathways, and multi-protein complexes. The development of a computational infrastructure that enables us to effectively analyze genomic data is critical to our research. We utilize state-of-the-art database and bioinformatic software in conjunction with custom programming for carrying out these studies. Consequently, we are continuously expanding and updating our computational toolbox.
We work primarily with prokaryotes because they are by far the best material for comparative genomics at this point in time.
- Many more prokaryotic genomes have been sequenced than eukaryotic genomes.
- Current genomes include prokaryotic representatives that span much longer evolutionary distances than eukaryotes.
- Genes (and therefore proteins) are more reliably and accurately predicted in prokaryotes.
- Signal transduction genes in prokaryotes are often organized in gene clusters, which enables powerful genome context mining (not available for eukaryotes).
- Detailed biochemical and genetic data is available for all major classes of signal transduction systems in prokaryotes, unlike eukaryotes .
Projects