Biomedical Research Foundation, Academy of Athens
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Molecular Evolution & Comparative Genetics
Molecular Evolution is the study of evolution looking at the DNA, the RNA and the proteins. It was in the 60’s that researchers from the molecular biology, evolutionary biology and population genetics fields; by taking advantage of the available data on the structure and function of nucleic acids and proteins tried to approach and understand evolutionary based questions. Recent advances in genomics including whole-genome sequencing, in proteomics including the high-throughput protein characterization and in bioinformatics including the storage and the analysis of the vast amount of data gave a real push to the studies in this field.
In the Bioinformatics group of the Biotechnology Division at the Foundation for Biomedical Research of the Academy of Athens, similarities and differences between the orthologous genes i.e. the evolutionary conserved genes in different species are studied. It is well known that the coding region of the genes is generally the most conserved area, therefore we begin our exploration from this region. This analysis gives important information on how well conserved a specific gene is across evolutionary history.
Regulation of the orthologous genes is something that interests us as well. The assumption being that if two genes are regulated by the same or equivalent mechanisms they should share conservation at their untranslated areas. Hence, we study the untranslated regions of the orthologous genes. This gives important information on the potential regulatory sites and guides further experimental work.
To have a bigger part of the picture in mind, we study the protein-protein interactions of the orhtologous sequences and their conservation or lack of it. This piece of information shows the stronger i.e. the most conserved as opposed to the weaker i.e. the less conserved interactions.
The use of modern information and communication technologies, to meet the needs of patients as well as of the providers.
currently we are running a tele-cardiology project: e-Herophilus
A Strategy to Improve the Quality and Reability of Telecardiology
To make an analogy with genomics, the
term proteomics emerged which describes the
high-throughput protein analysis. Different cell
types, different
developmental stages, different environmental
conditions give rise to different proteomes.
Proteomics is instrumental in the discovery of
biomarkers, that is proteins that indicate a
particular disease.
In our collaboration, we aim to develop new
algorithms/ software for the proteomics scientific
community, and analyzing the in-house data.