h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What sort of research? Never heard of it. I think you might have made that up so you look important.

Welcome to the Earth Edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm an Assistant Community Editor (ACE) and it's my job to help you settle in and help out in anyway I can. Click the reply button below this post if you'd like to answer, otherwise, enjoy your stay.

You might like to check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A559523. It's a page I've written that has some links you might find useful. If you'd like to visit me, click my name at the top of this post and you'll come directly to my personal space.

I probably should have put in a smiley after that first sentance, so you don't think I was being mean. (There's another one.)

And you'd think I'd know what site I come from by now. h2g2, not h2h2!
Any other ACE's about to help this poor chap get some proper greetings on his page?

Hiya,

Bioinformatic research? Well... as it happens there appear to be about three or four others involved in it here, but I'm afraid you might well find it dull.

It's all about biology and computers, and what happens when people interested in one find they need to become interested in the other in order to further their own research.

It's mostly rather one-sided in a sense, as it mainly consists of trying to use computers to manipulate biological data and solve various biological problems (no, not that sort - there are plenty of drugs for that sort of thing , ubt the computer scientists seem to get a kick out of weird problems to solve so they quite like it too.

Anyway, I'm sure that's far more detail than you wanted as no doubt you were just being friendly so I'll just shut up now.

Aha, now I understand.
There's a bloke around her somewhere that uses computers or something to look at manky old leaves, I'm sure you'll get on like a house on fire.
I heard (from the kitchen where my young man is cooking) that a lot of people that built robots look to nature, so that's sort of the same thing really.

Manky old leaves? Sounds a riot!

I'm afraid to say that I do rather enjoy the work (although not so much that I don't spend absurd amounts of time generally chatting to people on the internet), but there are other things in life...

Errr... if I may be permitted a further question, I'm trying to write an article about the game of go for the guide (as it doesn't seem to have one, which is a shocking omission to my mind!), but the thing is that it's really very difficult to say much about it without being able to use pictures. Is there any way in which this could be arranged?

Thanks.

Well, Sri http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F32500?thread=133383&post=1206002#p1206002 is the house artist, if you are going to get something in the edited guide you could ask her about illustrating it. I know it has been done in the past.

Thanks,

I'll have a word later on...

Actually, ignore that link, it's totally wrong.
Try this one...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/U19

I must have got my copy and pasting a bit confused... Sorry.

It seems that that there is an Edited Entry about Go. Try searching under Wei Chi, it's alternative name.

DG, who used to have a Go set, but it disappeared when he moved

Some how through the vast improbabilities that exist in this universe, A ma sitting hunched over a computer posted a relatively long and interesting Intoduction to himself in the guide, and so the story begins....

Yeah, Right. Hello, I see our resident ACE's have given you the proper greetings, I'm just another user like you, relatively new to this vast living entity known as the Guide. I read of work in manipulating bilogical data through computers in . Just what data do you manipulate?
I'm really intrigued.

Really? Damn. I thought I'd tried that...

Oh well, there go my dreams of fortune and glory

Data? Well... personally I work on protein sequence information. Depends on how much biology you know (let me know and I can give you a more detailed response) but basically I'm trying to find patterns in the sequences of proteins adopting common structures.

Kind of.

The issue is exceptionally tangled, and probably suffers greatly from a lack of precise definitions - it's difficult to search for patterns when the entities containing those patterns are not particularly well defined, but I think some kind of sense is beginning to claw its way to the surface...

There are all sorts of types of data which you can manipulate, though.

I'm not massively impressed with the current entry, although I'm sure I'm mostly just frustrated to find I've been beaten to it

Still, I wonder if there might not be room for some more specific entries...

ah, but what kind of protein sequences do you work on, and for what purpus? Is that all that you're involved in there?
As with all other things I come across I know some, which is generally more than the common person on the street would, but it's not as if I have a degree. So just throw what you can at me and I'll understand what I can, and try and keep an intellegent discussion about it.
I'm personally more inclined to physics and such but I try and get any info that I can on everything, except english because that's something that shouldn't have so many rules.

Well... TBPH I'm currently deciding upon answers to some of those questions myself. So far most of the work that I have done is on G-protein coupled receptor sequences, although this is in some respects an arbitrary choice.

The purpose of my particular work is to explore a method of representing patterns in such sequences and its utility in creating classifiers for protein families or superfamilies. I'm still not quite decided whether or not I'm going to be trying to work on somehting akin to fold-recognition or whether other ways of partitioning protein sequence space are more appropriate. In any case, the idea is that hopefully (given that our particular method has a relatively straightforward biological interpretation) any classifiers derived which do work well will be a possible source of insights into important structural and/or functional residues in the sequences.

If you're REALLY interested you could read

Daniel S.C., Parish J.H., Ison J.C. & Findlay J.B.C. (1999). Alignment of a sparse protien signature with protein sequences: application to fold prediction for three small globulins. FEBS Lett. 459: 349-52

But believe me, you really would have to be very interested indeed.

I just might read it at that, something intelligent for a change, though I'll bet it's really specialised(judjing from the title but that could just be me)

Yes, it is rather specialised. Also very terse, as it's only in a journal devoted to brief communications. There is another reference which goes into more detail, but alas I'm not able to quote it off the top of my head, although it has the same people (plus a couple more) as authors as the above paper, and was published in Proteins: Structure, Function and Genetics in 2000.

Otherwise, well, I'll have a website up at some point but it's going to be a while in coming, I have to do some research first (!). :0

ahh. Websites are good. I've just finished fixing mine, though it's almost time for a new layout. Layouts are good.