finin@PRC.UNISYS.COM (10/18/88)
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SCIENCE The Computational Linguistics of DNA David Searls Unisys Paoli Research Center Genetic information, as expressed in the four-letter alphabet of the DNA of living organisms, represents a complex and richly-expressive linguistic system that encodes procedural instructions on how to create and maintain life. There is a wealth of understanding of the semantics of this language from the field of molecular biology, but its syntax has been elaborated primarily at the lowest lexical levels, without benefit of formal computational approaches that might help to organize its description and analysis. In this talk, I will examine some linguistic properties of DNA, and propose that generative grammars can and should be used to describe genetic information in a declarative, hierarchical manner. Furthermore, I show how a Definite Clause Grammar implementation can be used to perform various kinds of analyses of sequence information by parsing DNA. This approach promises to be useful in recombinant DNA experiment planning systems, in simulation of genetic systems, in the interactive investigation of complex control sequences, and in large-scale search over huge DNA sequence databases. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1988 REFRESHMENTS 2:30 - 3:00 129 Pender COLLOQUIUM 3:00 - 4:30 216 MOORE