FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2007, 11 a.m., TI Auditorium (Directions)
MING LI
Canada Research Chair in Bioinformatics,
Professor of Computer Science
The University of Waterloo
Modern Homology Search
ABSTRACT: Homology search, finding similar parts between two sequences, is the most fundamental and popular task in bioinformatics.
Traditional homology search technology is a heuristic science. The search is either too slow or too insensitive. When it does return something, the results are simply some non-specific fragments of alignments.
We introduce new ideas, including a new mathematical theory of optimized spaced seeds, that allow modern homology search to achieve high sensitivity, high specific, and high speed simultaneously. This methodology is now implemented in most modern homology search software serving thousands of queries daily.
Joint work with Bin Ma, John Tromp, X.F. Cui, B. Brejova, T. Vinar, D. Shasha
BIO: Ming Li is a Canada Research Chair in Bioinformatics and a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. He is a Fellow of Royal Society of Canada, ACM, IEEE and a recipient of Canada's E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship Award in 1996, and the 2001 Killam Fellowship. Together with Paul Vitanyi they have pioneered the applications of Kolmogorov complexity and co-authored the book "An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications". His main research focus recently is protein structure prediction.
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