Dinithi Sumanaweera creates a model to predict and explain the function of proteins in the powerhouse of a cell
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Do you remember the times when your parents insisted you have enough proteins on a daily basis? It seemed such a chore then, but as we grow older we realize the importance of proteins. They keep our cells healthy and ensure proper cellular function. Cellular proteins are busy bodies that have complex structures and interact with each other.ack of proteins can cause diseases and degeneration of cells. Finding further information regarding properties of proteins is helpful for improving our health. Dinith Sumanaweera is a young graduate from the University of Moratuwa (UoM). After schooling at the Musaeus College, she was able to enter the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) degree program at UoM. Dinithi says, “Ever since I came across Proteins when I was learning my final year Bioinformatics module at UoM, I was keen on investigating them from a computational perspective". This interest evolved into a research project under the supervision of Dr. Shehan Perera at CSE, and a very enlightening journey towards obtaining her Masters degree. Dr. Shehan is a seasoned researcher with interest in areas of Data Mining, Databases, Software Engineering and Computer Science. He is a graduate of the University of Colombo and North Dakota State University, USA, and is an active researcher, having many publications and research students to his credit. |
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Together with Dr. Shehan, Dinithi carved out her research scope to study a subset of proteins associated with the Mitochondrion organization of a cell. Mitochondrion is known to be the “powerhouse” of the cell. Some of the proteins associated with Mitochondrion organization are related to certain human diseases as well. Therefore, proper assembly of the Mitochondrion is of utmost importance. She selected a subset of proteins from an organism called Saccharomyces Cerevisiae which is a species of yeast, for her study. It is an organism with a clearly defined nucleus, and is commonly used in the study of Eukaryotes Biology. Dinithi's main research objective was to build a model that predicts and explains a protein with the function related to Mitochondrian organization. The model works to reveal the classification of any protein that it is being tested on, given the relevant data of the protein as input. Those data include amino acid sequence information, protein-protein interactions, gene expression and secondary structure information of the protein. Coming from a Computer Science background, Dinithi has fused the knowledge of data mining to retrieve information on her choice of protein. Dinithi says that this model was developed with the aim to support biomedical researchers in their experiments to better understand Mitochondrion organization and its associated proteins. This information can be used to improve human health. She believes that it is beneficial to have this kind of specific models which could provide insights on specific functions, since biological processes are complex, with many different proteins acting in many different ways. During her Masters studies, Dinithi attended several conferences. Her paper entitled ‘An Ensemble based Silico Prediction of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Proteins under Mitochondrion Organization’ won an award as one of the best students papers at the 16th IEEE international conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering held in Taichung, Taiwan in 2016. “The fine research environment and the supportive community I had at the Dept. of CSE at UoM was indeed an important factor for successfully completing my Masters research”, Dinithi is appreciative of all persons who guided, supported, encouraged and mentored her in many ways at UoM, particularly her supervisor, Dr. Shehan Perera who had given tremendous support and advice. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of her research, she also received invaluable mentorship from Prof. T.L. Shamala Tirimanne of the Department of Plant Sciences, Prof. Vajira Dissanayake and Mr. Nilaksha Neththikumara of the Faculty of Medicine at University of Colombo. Dinithi hasn't given up on proteins yet. She now resides in Australia, reading for her PhD at the Monash University. Her current research is on statistical inference based protein alignment modeling. She is being supervised by Dr. Arun Konagurthu and Dr. Lloyd Allison from the Faculty of Information Technology. With this study, she aims to facilitate accurate identification of distant evolutionary relationships between proteins.  An exciting future awaits Dinithi, who hopes that her contributions towards Bioinformatics and Computational research will help answer important biomedical questions.
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