Richard Jackson
Lecturer and Research Group Leader

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Contact Details

Bioinformatics Group
Room 10.102
Garstang Building
School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
University of Leeds
Leeds
LS2 9JT

Phone  +44 (0)113 343 2592

Fax  +44 (0)113 343 3167

E-mail  r.m.jackson@leeds.ac.uk

Current Research

Structural Bioinformatics

 

The goal of our research is to gain a greater understanding of biomolecular interactions through the use and development of computational methods. Current projects concern the development of computational methods as well as their application in:

 

  • Protein-protein interactions and docking
  • Protein-ligand interactions and docking
  • Structure-based ligand design
  • Prediction of biomolecular function from structure
  • Comparative modelling of protein interactions

 

Development of computational methods

 

Research has involved development of published methods including;

 

  • FTDock protein-protein docking (Gabb et al. 1997)
  • MultiDock protein-protein docking (Jackson et al. 1998)
  • Q-fit protein-ligand docking (Jackson et al. 2002)
  • Q-SiteFinder prediction of protein-ligand binding sites (Laurie & Jackson, 2005)

 

We are currently further developing Q-fit for flexible ligand docking, virtual screening and structure-based ligand design. We have also developed a new algorithm for searching and comparing ligand binding sites for the prediction of function from structure (Brakoulias & Jackson, 2004).

 

Applications

 

We are also very much involved in applying our methods as well as comparative modelling methods to gain an understanding of protein interactions in collaboration with experimental groups for many different systems. Recently this includes;

 

  • SH2 domains (Prof. J.Ladbury, UCL)
  • Angiotensin Converting Enzymes, ACE/ACE2 (Profs. A. Turner and N. Hooper, Leeds)
  • Protein Kinases (Prof. A. Nelson, Chemistry, Leeds)

 

As well as investigating protein interactions responsible for disease, including;

 

  • Alpha1-antitrypsin (Dr. P. Talmud, British Heart Foundation Laboratories, Royal Free and University College Medical School)
  • Low-density-lipoprotein receptor-related protein 5 (LRP5) (Dr. C. Toomes and Prof. C. Inglehearn, Molecular Medicine Unit, Leeds)
  • Hepatitis C virus NS5A-SH3 domain interactions (Dr. M. Harris, Leeds)

 

For details of other current projects please see the list of group members.

 

Publications

Please see my group publications list

 

Selected Links

Departmental page

Astbury page

Research Group

Studentships/jobs