[BioC] Undergraduate Student Project Summer 2007, at EBI: the synapse and the brain

[Wolfgang Huber]

Undergraduate Student Project Summer 2007
at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) on the Wellcome
Trust Genome Campus in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire.

FIND Functional INtegration of Data - the synapse and the brain: the
application of computational biology to understand more about the
proteins involved in synapse function in the brain.

The FIND project will seek to unravel the functions and interactions
of the many proteins involved in synapse function. We will use
state-of-the-art bioinformatics tools to analyse all the available
sequence, structure, expression and pathway data related to
transmission of signals across the synapse. Over the summer of 2007, a
team of undergraduate students, supervised by scientists of research
groups at the EMBL-EBI, will gather and integrate as much knowledge as
possible about the components of the glutamate NMDA receptor complex
as well as their interactions. This protein hyperstructure, composed
of more than a hundred different proteins, is the main molecular
device responsible of learning and memory. The students will use the
whole spectrum of computational biology tools and techniques in order
to understand its function, including comparative genomics, molecular
phylogeny, structural biology, functional genomics and systems
biology.

Reference: Collins et al. Molecular characterization and comparison
of the components and multiprotein complexes in the postsynaptic
proteome. J Neurochem. 2006;97 Suppl 1:16-23.

The project will start on June 11th 2007 and run through the summer
months. Students interested to participate should send a cover-letter
and a CV to Nicolas Le Novere (lenov at ebi.ac.uk) or myself.

The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) is a research driven
academic organisation that forms part of the European Molecular
Biology Laboratory (EMBL). The Institute is one of the key providers
of databases of biological data including nucleic acid and protein
sequences, chemical structures and pathways. EBI's research groups
solve biological problems through the computational analysis of
biological data and the EBI covers the full Areas of research include:
genomic analysis of developmental pathways (Paul Bertone);
Evolutionary analysis of sequence data (Nick Goldman); computational
systems biology of neuronal signaling (Nicolas Le Nov



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Best wishes
 Wolfgang