Darwin and Fisher meet at biotech: on the potential of computational molecular evolution in industry

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Author
Date
2015-05-01Type
- Journal Article
Citations
Cited 7 times in
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Abstract
Background
Today computational molecular evolution is a vibrant research field that benefits from the availability of large and complex new generation sequencing data – ranging from full genomes and proteomes to microbiomes, metabolomes and epigenomes. The grounds for this progress were established long before the discovery of the DNA structure. Specifically, Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection not only remains relevant today, but also provides a solid basis for computational research with a variety of applications. But a long-term progress in biology was ensured by the mathematical sciences, as exemplified by Sir R. Fisher in early 20th century. Now this is true more than ever: The data size and its complexity require biologists to work in close collaboration with experts in computational sciences, modeling and statistics.
Results
Natural selection drives function conservation and adaptation to emerging pathogens or new environments; selection plays key role in immune and resistance systems. Here I focus on computational methods for evaluating selection in molecular sequences, and argue that they have a high potential for applications. Pharma and biotech industries can successfully use this potential, and should take the initiative to enhance their research and development with state of the art bioinformatics approaches.
Conclusions
This review provides a quick guide to the current computational approaches that apply the evolutionary principles of natural selection to real life problems – from drug target validation, vaccine design and protein engineering to applications in agriculture, ecology and conservation. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000100864Publication status
publishedExternal links
Journal / series
BMC Evolutionary BiologyVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
BioMed CentralSubject
Adaptation; Applied bioinformatics; Conservation; Drug target; Immune response; Modeling; Molecular evolution; Resistance; SelectionMore
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Citations
Cited 7 times in
Web of Science
Cited null times in
Scopus
ETH Bibliography
yes
Altmetrics