Department of Computing - Research

Computational bioinformatics

Head of section: Professor S. Muggleton
Academic staff: Dr S. Colton

The main research focus of the computational bioinformatics section is on the use of inductive logic programming, together with vector machine learning for bioinformatic applications, such as the identification of toxins that inhibit enzymes in metabolic networks, prediction of three-dimensional structure of molecules in biochemical reactions for drug development and the missing functions within metabolic and gene expression networks. Main interdisciplinary collaborations are via the College’s Centre for Bioinformatics.

Areas of interest include:

• Functional genomics; inference of gene function from activity
• Predictive toxicology; identification of toxins that inhibit enzymes in metabolic networks
• Pharmacophore prediction; three-dimensional structure of molecules in biochemical reactions-key for drug development
• Biological network completion; hypothesise missing functions within metabolic and gene expression networks