Phenomenological Universalities as a new tool for experimental and
cross-disciplinary research
Professor Pier Paolo Delsanto
Corresponding Member of Romanian Academy
Director of the Romanian Bioinformatics Society
Biomedical Engineering Centre,
University "Politehnica" of Bucharest,
ROMANIA
E-mail: pcristea@dsp.pub.ro
Website:
http://www.acad.ro/academia2002/acadrom/pag_ist.htm
Abstract: The conversion of nucleotide sequences into digital genomic
signals allows using signal processing methods for the analysis of genomic
data. This approach reveals surprising regularities in the distribution of
nucleotides and pairs of nucleotides, in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
These structural and statistical restrictions of genomic sequences would be
difficult to identify by using only statistical and pattern matching
methods, as in standard symbolic sequence analysis.
Long range regularities make the structure of a genome be less like that of
a "plain text", which simply conveys a semantics in accordance to a grammar,
and more like that of a "poem", which obeys additional structural rules that
give "rhythm" and "rhyme". A direct application of these regularities is
predicting nucleotides in a sequence, when knowing the preceding ones, in a
way similar to time series prediction. This approach attempts to model
processes such as DNA replication, DNA transcription, or mRNA translation,
and allows to explore the possibility of low level error correction.
Moreover, genomic signal analysis (GSA) reveals the hidden ancestral
structure of nucleotide sequences, before their re-structuring under the
selective pressure of species separation.
GSA is also efficient in the analysis of pathogen variability. This is
important for the molecular level detection of mutations that induce drug
resistance, providing the clinician with information needed for a fast and
accurate decision, and avoiding the lengthily and expensive phenotypic
clinical studies requesting pathogen culture. The talk will present result
in the molecular study of variability of Human Immunodeficiency Virus,
performed in cooperation with Dr. Dan Otelea from the National Institute of
Infectious Diseases “Prof.Dr.Matei Bals”, and of Mycobacterium tuberculosis,
in cooperation with Dr. Dorina Banica from the National Institute of
Pneumo-Phtysiology “Prof. Dr. Marius Nasta”, Bucharest, Romania and Dr.
Karin Rodewald, Max-Plank – Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany.
Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Paul Cristea graduated the Faculty of Electronics and
Telecommunications (UPB - University "Politehnica" of Bucharest, Romania,
1962), the Faculty of Physics (University of Bucharest, 1969), and has a
Ph.D. in Technical Physics (UPB, 1970). Since then his research and teaching
activities covered an large area of Electrical Engineering and related
domains including topics like Digital Signal and Image Processing, Genomic
Signals, Neural and Evolutionary Systems, Computerized Medical Equipment,
Evolutionary Intelligent Agents, Intelligent e-Learning Environments. He is
the author or co-author of more then 130 published papers, 11 patents and
contributed to more then 20 books in these fields. He is currently
affiliated with UPB, the Biomedical Engineering Center (general director)
and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, the ETRO Department. He is a
corresponding member of the Romanian Academy and director of the Romanian
Bioinformatics Society.
