Department of Zoology

Principal Investigators

Research area - Ecology and Conservation Science

My research interests lie in how computational approaches can be used to understand the relationship between protein sequence, protein structure and biological function. My earlier research has focused on many aspects of computational structural bioinformatics, including both the development of new algorithms as well as application of current methods to problems in biology and molecular medicine. My recent focus of research is the application of these techniques to predict the effect sequence variations have on the structure, dynamics, folding and function of proteins and their involvement in the onset and proliferation of disease. I am currently working with Prof Derek Smith on the strain variation in the Influenza virus and other infectious diseases.

Research group - The Center for Pathogen Evolution

Selected publications

• Burke DF, Worth C, Prego EM, Cheng T, Smink L, Todd J and Blundell TL (2007) Large scale bioinformatic analysis of non-synonymous SNPs. BMC Bioinformatics 8:301 doi:10.1186/1471-2105-8-301

• Blundell TL, Sibanda BL, Montalvao RW, Brewerton S, Chelliah V, Worth C, Harmer N, Davies O and Burke DF (2006) Structural Biology and Bioinformatics in Drug Design: Opportunities and Challenges for Target identification and Lead Discovery Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 361(1467):413-23
• Bujdoso R, Burke DF and Thackray A (2005) Structural differences between allelic variants of the ovine prion protein revealed by molecular dynamics simulations Proteins: Structure, Function and Bioinformatics 61(4)
• Burke DF and Deane CM (2001) Improved Loop prediction from sequence alone. Protein Engineering Vol 14(7) 473-478
• Nagendra HG, Harrington AE, Harmer NJ, Blundell TL, Pelligrini L and Burke DF (2001) Analysis of sequences and structures of Fly and Worm fibroblast growth factor receptors indicate that the determinants of FGF and heparin binding are retained in evolution. Febs Letters 501(1), 51-58
• Pellegrini L, Burke DF, Mulloy B and Blundell TL (2000) The structure of the Fibroblast growth factor receptor, FGF and heparin complex. Nature 407, 1029-1034
• Burke DF, Wilkes D, Blundell TL and Malcolm S (1998) Fibroblast growth factor receptor- lessons from the genes. TIBS 23 59-62