Mrázek, Jan
Research Interest
The long-term goal of our research is to understand the information encoded in the DNA to the extent that we can accurately predict properties of an organism, including its responses to external stimuli, from its genomic sequence. A common approach currently used is to find all genes and open reading frames in a genome, to predict their function from protein sequence comparisons, and, with the predicted complement of all proteins of the organism at hand, to speculate about its metabolic, environmental, cellular, and morphological characteristics.
Our research centers on discovery and analysis of sequence features not directly associated with genes and proteins, and their possible roles in the organism’s physiology and evolution. We are particularly interested in those sequence features that affect DNA structure and/or promote conformational transitions in the DNA molecule.