Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Heterogeneous Activity Causes A Nonlinear Increase In The Group Energy Use Of Ant Workers Isolated From Queen And Brood, Nolan Ferral, Kyara Holloway, Mingzhong Li, Zhaozheng Yin, Chen Hou

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Increasing evidence has shown that the energy use of ant colonies increases sublinearly with colony size so that large colonies consume less per capita energy than small colonies. It has been postulated that social environment (e.g., in the presence of queen and brood) is critical for the sublinear group energetics, and a few studies of ant workers isolated from queens and brood observed linear relationships between group energetics and size. In this paper, we hypothesize that the sublinear energetics arise from the heterogeneity of activity in ant groups, that is, large groups have relatively more inactive members than small groups. …

A Framework For Automated Enrichment Of Functionally Significant Inverted Repeats In Whole Genomes, Cyriac Kandoth, Fikret ErçAl, Ronald L. Frank

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Background: RNA transcripts from genomic sequences showing dyad symmetry typically adopt hairpin-like, cloverleaf, or similar structures that act as recognition sites for proteins. Such structures often are the precursors of non-coding RNA (ncRNA) sequences like microRNA (miRNA) and small-interfering RNA (siRNA) that have recently garnered more functional significance than in the past. Genomic DNA contains hundreds of thousands of such inverted repeats (IRs) with varying degrees of symmetry. But by collecting statistically significant information from a known set of ncRNA, we can sort these IRs into those that are likely to be functional.

Results: A novel method was developed to …

Protein Secondary Structure Prediction Using Parallelized Rule Induction From Coverings, Leong Lee, Cyriac Kandoth, Jennifer Leopold, Ronald L. Frank

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Protein 3D structure prediction has always been an important research area in bioinformatics. In particular, the prediction of secondary structure has been a well-studied research topic. Despite the recent breakthrough of combining multiple sequence alignment information and artificial intelligence algorithms to predict protein secondary structure, the Q3 accuracy of various computational prediction algorithms rarely has exceeded 75%. In a previous paper [1], this research team presented a rule-based method called RT-RICO (Relaxed Threshold Rule Induction from Coverings) to predict protein secondary structure. The average Q3 accuracy on the sample datasets using RT-RICO was 80.3%, an improvement over comparable computational methods. …

Determining Domain Similarity And Domain-Protein Similarity Using Functional Similarity Measurements Of Gene Ontology Terms, Lisa Michelle Guntly, Jennifer Leopold, Anne M. Maglia

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Protein domains typically correspond to major functional sites of a protein. Therefore, determining similarity between domains can aid in the comparison of protein functions, and can provide a basis for grouping domains based on function. One strategy for comparing domain similarity and domain-protein similarity is to use similarity measurements of annotation terms from the Gene Ontology (GO). In this paper five methods are analyzed in terms of their usefulness for comparing domains, and comparing domains to proteins based on GO terms.