Structural Approaches to Sequence Evolution

Ugo Bastolla is researcher in the laboratory of bioinformatics of theCentro de Astrobiologia in Madrid (Spain), on leave to the Centro deBiologia Molecular of the Spanish CSIC. Since his degree in physicswith Luca Peliti he has always been interested in biological topics,above all evolution. He got is PhD in Rome with Giorgio Parisi workingon disordered dynamical systems inspired to biology and was postdoc inJulich (Germany) with Peter Grassberger, studying statistical mechanicalmodels of polymers, in Berlin (Germany) with E.W. Knapp studying simpleprotein models, in Golm (Germany) with Michael Laessig, studyingecological models, and finally in Madrid (Spain) in the bioinformaticsgroup of Alfonso Valencia. His main research interest consists in combiningsimple models of protein thermodynamics and evolution.Markus Porto is professor of Theoretical Solid State Physics at theInstitut fur Festkorperphysik at the Technische Universitat Darmstadt(Germany). He received his PhD at the Universitat Giessen (Germany). Hisresearch interests cover many aspects of solid state and statisticalphysics, including transport and relaxation in disordered systems andbiophysics, as well as applying methods of statistical physics to modelmolecular evolution.H. Eduardo Roman is Research Fellow at the Department of Physics of theUniversity of Milan-Bicocca. He earned his Ph.D at the International Schoolfor Advanced Studies, Trieste (Italy), and has been Privat Dozent at theUniversities of Hamburg and Giessen (Germany). His research interests covermany aspects of Statistical Physics, from fractals to stochastic phenomena,biophysics, proteins and evolution, and ab-initio electronic calculations inmolecules.Michele Vendruscolo is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at theDepartment of Chemistry, University of Cambridge. He received his PhD inCondensed Matter Physics in 1996 at the International School for AdvancedStudies, Trieste (Italy). His research is mainly focussed on understandingthe biophysical principles regulating the behaviour and the evolution ofproteins.