The Hamilton Institute and Kathleen Lonsdale Institute for Human Health Research will co-host a seminar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88018185733?pwd=OEcxb2ZSYUwzV2hWTE9wcE1yTWRUQT09
Passcode: 279596
In-person: Hamilton Institute Seminar room (317), 3rd Floor Eolas Building, North Campus, Maynooth University
Speaker: Professor Des Higgins, University College Dublin
Title: "Multiple Sequence Alignment Algorithms over the past 30 years"
Abstract: Historically, bioinformatics mainly dealt with analysing DNA and protein sequences. Aligning groups of sequences is an essential precursor to many further analyses such as phylogeny estimation and protein structure prediction. Exact algorithms for doing this are NP complete so the vast majority of practical methods rely on heuristics. These heuristics have been very well studied for decades and the most efficient methods can now make alignments of millions of sequences. In this talk I will focus on the history of the Clustal package and the main developments since we first developed it in the late 1980s.
Bio: Professor Des Higgins, Professor of Bioinformatics, School of Medicine and Conway Institute, UCD. I have been a bioinformatics researcher since 1985, mainly working on sequence alignment algorithms, molecular evolution and the analysis of genomic data. My main work has been the development and maintenance of the Clustal multiple sequence alignment package which is one of the most widely used bioinformatics packages over the past 30 years.