Statistical Mechanics in Systems Biology:
Regulation, Inference, Optimization

Villa Orlandi, Anacapri ~ May 29 - June 1, 2012
Olivier Rivoire
CNRS and Universite' Joseph Fourier (Grenoble)

Patterns of coevolution in proteins

Functional interactions in proteins constrain the substitutions of amino acids during evolution. These constraints leave a signature in alignments of functionally related sequences, and different approaches have been proposed to analyze it: we used an approach termed Statistical Coupling Analysis to infer groups of collectively co-evolving residues ("sectors") [1]; another approach, the Direct-Coupling Analysis, has been used to successfully infer pairs of residues in contact in 3d structures [2]. I will present a synthesis of these two approaches and results, and show how they can be extended to reveal new patterns of coevolution.

[1] N. Halabi et al. Cell 138: 774 (2009).
[2] F. Marcos et al. PNAS 108: E1293 (2011).


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