The recent advances in molecular genetics are providing a storm of new data on DNA sequences, on gene structure and higher order genomic structure. However, the implications of these new data are not always clear. This area of scientific inquiry is a relatively new inter-disciplinary field between biology, computer science and mathematics. We make use of computer based analysis, statistical analysis and mathematical models to answer broad questions about the molecular biology of all organisms.

All of our work deals with aspects of bioinformatics/computational biology/molecular evolution. Currently we are examining

1. The relationships of amino acid replacements to the three dimensional structure of proteins and what controls the patterns of these replacements.
2. The presence of unusual repetitive segements in proteins. What are they doing there, how did they originate, why are they not in protein structures but are in the sequence data, how to efficiently detect them?
3. The detection of horizontally transferred genes. The patterns of transfer between species. What limits horizontal transfer (are there any limits)? How do transfers occur? What size chunks are transferred etc?
4. Theoretical studies of the dynamics of genes in populations and species.

For one page summaries of a few recent publications see

protein structure and evolutionary rate	Sinorhizobium project	gene transfers in E. coli
isocitrate engineering	protein repeats

To contact me, send email to Golding@McMaster.CA.