RESOLVING THE 3D STRUCTURE OF VIRAL GENOMES WITH ATOMIC RESOLUTION

Professor Aksimentiev and his team are working to make a transformative leap in the development of computational technology for resolving the structure of the viral genome. They have previously developed a highly effective multiresolution model of DNA and applied it to predict the 3D structure of bacteriophage virus genomes. However, applying the same method to RNA viruses is difficult because RNA can adopt multiple conformations. They believe they can overcome this difficulty by using low-resolution experimental data to guide their computational modeling. In collaboration with an experimental group that has begun to obtain low-resolution 3D structures of viral genomes, they have developed a prototype multi-resolution model of RNA and used it to generate atomically precise model structures. As the next generation of supercomputers comes online, Aksimentiev and his team will be poised to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity to apply their methodology to medically relevant systems.