INGEN gets boost with addition of new leader in bioinformatics

Bioinformatics merges advances in biomedical research with the latest techniques in computing and information sciences. Bioinformatics techniques will enable scientists to effectively gather and analyze the huge volumes of data modern research produces, from the activities of genes and proteins to the results of laboratory experiments to the findings reported in science journals.

Dunker said he was attracted to IUSM by the quality of the research underway, faculty support for development of a bioinformatics program, the foundation provided by INGEN, and the “unusually visionary” support for basic research by the school’s administrators.

His personal research interest is the relationship between folding of proteins and their function. Traditionally, the three-dimensional structures of proteins have been viewed as key to their activities. His research has shown that many proteins have regions that don’t fold into specific structures, and that these “natively disordered” regions are critical to these proteins’ functions. Because these functions relate especially to cell-signaling and regulation, many of these proteins are important in illnesses that are associated with cell-signaling defects, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson disease and cancer.

Using bioinformatics as one of the tools to evaluate these proteins, Dunker’s research promises to challenge fundamental assumptions in molecular biology about the role of protein structures.

He has been on the faculty of Washington State University since August 1975 and a professor of biochemistry there since September 1983. He received his doctorate in biophysics from the University of Wisconsin in 1969 and then studied molecular biophysics as a postdoctoral student at Yale University. He was a research associate in virology at Sloan Kettering before joining Washington State.

Dunker’s wife, Ya-Yue Van, is president of Molecular Kinetics Inc., a scientific instruments company. The two are collaborating on commercialization efforts based on his research, and his commercialization efforts have resulted in three Small Business Innovation Research grants and other contracts. This commercialization activity is supporting a small research team that will move to Indianapolis. In addition, Molecular Kinetics is considering using incubator space in the new Emerging Technology Center being developed downtown by IU’s Advanced Research and Technology Institute.