MSL Seminar Series: May Invite Speaker – Dr. Debora Marks

Dr. Debora Marks is an Associate Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard University, as well as an Associate Member of the Broad Institute.

Talk Title: Prediction and design of biological sequences with neural machines

What can we do with billions of genomes and immune repertoire sequences? There’s now an amazing opportunity to develop machine learning methods that can exploit this enormous natural diversity to predict the effects of human genetic variation, to predict how viral genomes may evolve and to design biological sequences for therapeutics and biotechnology. I demonstrate how unsupervised probabilistic generative modeling of sequences can give surprisingly direct answers to questions about 3D structures, dynamics, genetic variation and the design of biological systems. I will focus on new methods that result in accurate prediction of the clinical effects of protein mutations and the design of smart nanobody libraries optimized for stability and diversity. I will end by introducing challenges for extending these methods to diverse applications.  

Zoom registration link:
https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5Ylc-uhpz8qGtbU3Erorql7AUjR9ZZTo4Xa

Hosted by: Dr. Jōrg Gsponer