Congratulations to Rafael Vieira for successfully defending his MSc thesis in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology titled “Designing in-silico aptamers for potential marine bioremediation” (Novemeber 8th 2024). Rafael’s thesis was developed under the supervision of Dr. Sérgio F. Sousa (BioSIM), Dr. João Carneiro (CIIMAR) and Dr. Diogo Pratas (DETI/IEETA).
The research developed over the course of this thesis brought new understanding of the positive impact of three-dimensional features in modeling aptamer-target interactions, and better understanding of the scope of the data sharing issue that affects the field.
This work entailed the creation of an aptamer database (AptaCom), which was then used in development of a machine learning model for aptamer-protein interaction classification. The database was tested as a preliminary screening tool for potential aptamer-target interactions, while the model successfully predicted possible aptamers to be applied in the context of marine bioremediation.
This work highlights the interdisciplinarity of bioinformatics by working with BioSIM, CIIMAR and DETI/IEETA, bringing together computational biochemistry, bioremediation and machine learning development.
