Research Description

We develop and apply computational genomics approaches to best characterized biological processes in order to reveal novel functional features that cannot be obtained by experimental techniques alone. In this work, we use an array of bioinformatics tools - from sensitive similarity searches to phylogenetics and structure prediction - and several tiers of hardware - from workstations and stand-alone servers to Linux clusters and supercomputers.

We are interested in fundamental biological questions, such as signal transduction, gene regulation and protein-protein interactions, which we study through the prism of molecular evolution. Our main focus is on prokaryotes, but we also apply approaches developed with bacterial systems to human genes that are implicated in diseases ranging from rare Mendelian disorders to cancer. Our credo is simple: Nature has already performed millions of genetic experiments; all we need to do is to carefully analyze the results. Most of our studies generate testable hypotheses that are often taken directly into experiment by our colleagues in wet laboratories.