University
of Pittsburgh Carnegie Mellon University

Joint CMU-Pitt Ph.D. Program in Computational Biology

Robert F. Murphy and Ivet Bahar, Directors

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Curriculum - Core Course - Computational Structural Biology

This core course was offered jointly by Pitt and CMU for the first time in the 2005-2006 academic year. It is taught in the Spring semester. Topics covered include:

  • applying computational and statistical methods to the analysis of DNA and protein structures
  • representing protein, DNA and RNA structure
  • homology modeling and protein structure prediction
  • theoretical description of basic interactions, along with computational methods to estimate them
  • statistical mechanical theory of molecules
  • molecular dynamics and other sampling methods
  • modeling protein flexibility, from side chains to loops to slow modes
  • reaction paths and basics of path sampling
  • protein-protein and protein-small molecule docking
  • supramolecular assembly
  • introduction to Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR) in drug design