The long-term goal of my postdoctoral research is to understand mutation-induced adaptation in biological systems. Specifically, I wish to determine correlations between optimal mutation rates and environmental stresses, and to elucidate general power laws that govern dynamics in the gene sequence space. I will also develop mathematical models for specific biological networks, to quantitatively predict the mutation-induced evolution of these networks when subject to various environmental stresses. This study will require the use of genomic and proteomic databases, as well as predictive methods from computational biology, in order to determine the function of the various evolving components of the biological networks under study. ? ?
