Towards the application of quantum computing in computational biology

Giovedì 13 maggio alle 17 si tiene un seminario del ciclo Quantum Computing & Technologies dedicati al tema "Quantum Computing and Technologies for Biological Systems".

Towards the application of quantum computing in computational biology

Pier Luigi Martelli (Dept. of Pharmacy and Biotechnology - University of Bologna)

Abstract:

In modern biology, the dissection of system complexity and the modelling of functional processes in physiological and pathological states heavily rely on the development and adoption of computational methods. The rapid advancement of quantum computing techniques is expected to produce a high impact in different applications, although the current quantum devices still do not demonstrate clear advantages over classical computers in solving practical problems of computational biology.  

The seminar will review some of the recent projects in the field, with the aim of showing the variety of problems that can be tackled and the diversity of adopted approaches. Some of the problems that have been addressed so far are: i) the de novo assembly of DNA sequences reformulated as quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) solved with quantum annealing (QA) or Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA); ii) the detection of binding sites of proteins (transcription factors) on DNA with classical and quantum machine learning approaches; iii) the protein folding (i.e. the computational determination of a protein structure starting from protein sequence) with QA, QAOA and hybrid approaches.

Partecipa al webinar.