Biography:
Dr. Schneider
received a B.S. in biology at MIT in 1978 and
received his Ph.D. in 1984 from the University of Colorado,
Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology.
His thesis was on applying Shannon's information theory
to DNA and RNA binding sites
(Schneider1986).
Using information theory,
the commonly used
consensus sequences
can now be replaced with
two kinds of graphic:
sequence logos
and
sequence walkers.
The walkers can be used to predict
whether or not splice junction sequence changes are
polymorphisms or mutations and in the latter case
the severity of the resulting disease.
By introducing the relationship between energy and information,
Dr. Schneider is also
applying the theory to many other molecular systems.
Shannon's theory has two basic equations, one for the uncertainty
and the other for the channel capacity.
Dr. Schneier has shown how to apply the channel capacity
to molecular machines
and he used this to compute the
isothermal efficiency
of a DNA binding protein and light sensing molecules.
Suprisingly these efficiencies are near 70%,
a result that can be understood by proposing that the molecules
function in a high dimensional coding space
and that they have evolved to function at channel capacity.
Schneider Lab
origin: 1997 February 6
updated:
2020 Aug 05
