The Bio2Byte group is led by Prof. Dr. Wim Vranken, with many people contributing to the research. The group is primarily situated at the Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels, a collaborative interfaculty institute between the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Université Libre de Bruxelles. It is located at the the ULB side of the Pleinlaan/La Plaine campus on the 6th floor of the C building.
At the VUB, the group is linked to Structural Biology Brussels at the Bioengineering sciences department, as well as the departments of Computer Science and Chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences, plus to the Biomedical Sciences at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy.
Proteins are the molecular machines that make cells work. They perform a wide variety of functions through interactions with each other and many additional molecules. Traditionally, proteins are described in a single static state (a picture). It is increasingly recognised that many proteins can adopt multiple states and move between these conformational states dynamically (a movie).
The group investigates how proteins' dynamics, conformational states and available experimental data relate to their amino acid sequence. Underlying physical and chemical principles are computationally unravelled through data integration, analysis and machine learning, so connecting them to biological events and improving our understanding of how proteins work.
The Bio2Byte group developed a number of tools for use in research including DynaMine and Bio2Byte SARS-CoV-2 which both have been recognised as an ELIXIR Belgium Node Service. Wim Vranken is also a member of The Artificial Intelligence Lab at VUB.