Development of physics-based computational models for predicting the spatial architecture of bacterial genomes.

The functioning of genomes has been connected to its spatial organization in different topological
domains, where co-functional genes assemble and coordinate their function. Hi-C technology is the
single type of experiment that can provide 3-D maps of entire genomes, although it is a hard
experimental technique, only attainable to few labs in the world and it just provides a low resolution
picture. Thus, effective computational tools capable to infer and support Hi-C data will make us to
advance towards further controlling genetic information and engineering better genomes for
synthetic biology. Matthew Burman is developing an algorithm to predict the 3D shape of genomic fragments
and compare the outcomes with Hi-C data in collaboration with Mark Leake and Tung Le (JIC, Norwich). The library of topology-relevant sequence motifs will be used to scan different genomes of interest at a bioinformatics level in collaboration with James Chong (Biology)