BME News Highlights
Faculty HighlightsFebruary 17, 2009 Karchin earns NSF CAREER award The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program award to Dr. Rachel Karchin,
a third-year, tenure-track Assistant Professor who holds appointments in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Institute for Computational Medicine, Department of Computer Science, Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University and Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The award is worth more than $500,000 over a period of five years to support Dr. Karchin's work in modeling missense mutations.
High-throughput genome
sequencing has resulted in vast amounts of data on amino acid residue
sequence variation (i.e. missense mutations). This has presented the
opportunity to increase our understanding of how protein sequence,
structure, and function are inter-related. Further, in order to
understand the role of interactions between individual mutations,
accurate modeling methods are needed. This will bring the field closer
towards understanding the genetic basis of natural protein evolution
and to improve efforts to evolve proteins in the laboratory. This
project is developing computational models for missense mutant
function prediction that will be used to explore: the importance of
biological context in protein response to missense mutation (such as
loss or gain of activity); the generalizability of such responses
among different proteins; and the relative importance of biophysics
and phylogeny to a mutation's functional impact. Further, an
experimental verification of these model predictions is being tested
in a directed evolution system in Escherichia coli.
The work will contribute to computational research in public health
(genetic components of disease), agriculture, and ecology (plant and
animal susceptibility to pathogens and parasites, resistance to
herbicides and insecticides, response to fertilizers). As part of her
CAREER plan Dr. Karchin will introduce high school students from
groups underrepresented in science, particularly disadvantaged young
women, to computational biology. A unique approach to this activity is
a molecular evolution computer game designed by Dr. Karchin for high school
students. She says, "The game is an agent-based model to evolve a
highly fit population of toy proteins in a virtual environment."
According to NSF, the CAREER Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. Posted: February 17, 2009
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