February 2003 Meeting
The three hundred and fortieth meeting of the Susquehanna Valley Section of the American Chemical Society will take place at College Misericordia on Wednesday February 19th, 2003 at 8:00 p.m. The guest speaker, Dr. Eric Sayers, Ph.D. of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, will present a talk entilted Linking Genomes, Proteins, and Structures to Disease Using Bioinformatics.Dinner will be at "Picketts Charge" Restaurant on Route 415 Memorial Highway, (570) 675-4511(5:00 social hour- 6:00 dinner)
Please call for dinner reservations, Helen Bogdon, Science Secretary (570) 674-6378 or Dr Thomas Wood 674-6245 by Monday, February 17th, for reservations.
Directions
For "Picketts Charge" restaurant - From I-81: Follow directions from I-81 as below. Do NOT turn on Lake St. Stay on main road (in Dallas this becomes Route 415.) "Picketts Charge" restaurant is on the Right side of Route 415 at the light with Center Hill Rd, about mile north of Lake St. (and Wendy's).
For 'Picketts Charge' from the West off of I-80 (Follow directions from I-80 as below). Restaurant is on Left side of Route 415 at the light where Route 415 and Center Hill Rd cross.
TO MISERICORDIA From I-81 Get off at Exit 170B (old exit 47B)- Route 309 North. I-81 has signs for various local colleges. Follow Route 309 across the expressway, about 4-5 miles, (signs say "Dallas") and up the steep hill on the other side about 3-4 miles. At the five-way intersection (the seventh or eighth light) take the second RIGHT turn. Look carefully- There is a sign for "Misericordia". This is Lake St. The five-way intersection is 100 yards past a Wendy's on the right. From Lake St. go straight at the Stop sign, Misericordia main gate is 100 yards further on the right. Once on the campus- go up the driveway, bear right- park next to the Science building which is the second building on the right - the all glass building very near the road.
TO MISERICORDIA From I-80. Take I-80 to the Bloomsburg exit Route 487 north. Go north (15-20 miles) to Route 118 then go right on 118 East for about 20-22 miles to the end. At this point go right on Route 415- you are approaching the Lake St turn from the opposite direction. At the first light go Left (Center Hill Road). At the stop sign go Left again onto Lake St. Campus main gate is 100 yards ahead on the right. Follow above directions from there.
Linking Genomes, Proteins, and Structures to Disease Using Bioinformatics
With the advent of vast amounts of genomic data, one of the foremost
challenges is to construct a comprehensive yet biologically meaningful system for organizing these data. The system must be searchable and must be able to forge biologically relevant links between the disparate data types being produced. An overview of recent progress towards these goals will be provided, focusing on efforts at NCBI. As nucleotide sequence databases have grown, they have driven the growth of protein sequence databases. Such protein sequences can then be used to construct sequence alignments that
unveil conserved functional domains within a protein family. Combining such alignments with three-dimensional structural data then allows these functional domains to be analyzed at an atomic level. Further linking these data to known clinical studies of deleterious mutations completes the journey from human disease to protein chemistry, and serves as model for discovering disease remedies in the future.
Eric W. Sayers, Ph. D. received his BS Chemistry in 1990 from Duke University and his M.Phil in Pharmacology in 1991at the University of Cambridge under Michael Waring. His Thesis work involved studying the influence of Hoogsteen pairs on the binding of echinomycin to DNA. Eric received his PhD in Pharmacology in 1998 from Yale University under thesis advisor: James Prestegard. His Ph.D. thesis work involved studying protein-carbohydrate interactions using multidimensional NMR.From 1998 to 2002 he did a Postdoc at NIDCR/NIH under Dennis Torchia where he studied the solution behavior of transiently structured regions of ribosomal proteins using NMR. Eric joined the National Center for Biotechnology Information Feb, 2002 as a scientist in the NCBI User Services group, and he is currently part of the teaching staff, technical support staff, and other groups working to improve NCBI resources for use by the research community.
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