Dear all, the next seminar will take place on Wednesday, please see the details below. We look forward to seeing you all! Title:   From human population variation to ligand binding sites via SARS-CoV-2 Speaker:  Geoff Barton (University of Dundee) Date and time: Wednesday 17/04/2024 - 17:20 Location: MFF UK, Malostranské nám. 25, lecture hall S4 https://bioinformatics.cuni.cz/seminar/ Best wishes, Petr Danecek ------------------------------- *Geoff Barton (University of Dundee)* */From human population variation to ligand binding sites via SARS-CoV-2 /* In this talk I will present an analysis that compares publicly available variation data for human with variation seen across all available protein sequences regardless of species. The analysis confirms patterns of variation in human are consistent with protein structural features (e.g. alpha-helix and begta-strand) but highlights structurally and functionally important sites in around 15,000 human protein domains that are not found by conventional sequence analysis methods. The identified sites are enriched in disease-associated variants, ligand binding residues and protein-protein interaction sites. I will explain the method and illustrate the new analysis with examples including the Nuclear Receptor Ligand Binding Domains and G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) which are important therapeutic targets. The study makes heavy use of the popular Jalview (www.jalview.org) sequence analysis program developed since 1996 in my group, so I will also give a brief update on Jalview’s new features for exploring nsSNPs on alignments and three-dimensional structures including predictions by AlphaFold.