Edward Trifonov

Thus in his wedge model, Trifonov supposed that each combination of neighboring base pairs form a certain angle (specific for these base pairs). He called this feature curvature. Moreover, he suggested that in addition to curvature, each base pairs step could be deformed to different extent being bound to the histone octamer and he called it bending. These two features of DNA present in the nucleosomes – curvature and bending have been now considered major factors playing a role in the nucleosome positioning. Periodicity of other dinucleotides were confirmed later by Alexander Bolshoy and co-workers. Finally, an ideal sequence of the nucleosomal DNA was derived in 2009 by Gabdank, Barash and Trifonov. The proposed sequence CGRAAATTTYCG (R standing for a purine: A or G, Y for a pyrimidine: C or T) expresses the preferential order of the dinucleotides in the sequence of the nucleosomal DNA. However, these inferences are disputed by some scientists.

Trifonov has been a head of the Genome Diversity Center at the Institute of Evolution at the University of Haifa in Israel since 2002, and a professor at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic since 2007.

Trifonov's concept of protein modules tries to address the questions of proteins evolution and protein folding. In 2000, Trifonov with Berezovsky and Grosberg studied protein sequences and tried to identify simple sequential elements in proteins. They postulated that structurally diverse closed loops of 25–30 amino acid residues are universal building blocks of protein folds.

In 1996 Thomas Bettecken, a German geneticist noticed that most of the triplet expansion diseases can be attributed only to two triplets: GCU and GCC, the rest being their permutations or complementary counterparts. He discussed this finding with Trifonov, his friend and colleague. Trifonov had earlier discovered (GCU)n to be a hidden mRNA consensus sequence. Thus the combination of these two facts led them to the idea that the (GCU)n could reflect a pattern of ancient mRNA sequences.

Linguistic sequence complexity (LC) is a measure introduced by Trifonov in 1990. It is used for analyses and characterization of biological sequences. LC of a sequence is defined as "richness" of its vocabulary, i.e. how many different substrings of certain length are present in the sequence.

Trifonov pioneered the application of digital signal processing techniques to biological sequences. In 1980, he and Joel Sussman used autocorrelation to analyse chromatin DNA sequences. They were the first to discover two periodical patterns in the DNA sequences, namely 3 bp and 10-11bp (10.4) periodicity.

Since the beginning of his Israeli scientific period Trifonov has been studying the chromatin structure, investigating how certain segments of the DNA are packed inside the cells in protein-DNA complexes called nucleosomes. In a nucleosome, the DNA winds around the histone protein component. The principle of this winding (and thus the rules determining nucleosome positions), was not known at the beginning of the 1980s, although multiple models had been suggested. These included

This model was based on the work of Trifonov and Joel Sussman who had shown in 1980 that some of the dinucleotides (nucleotide dimers) are frequently placed in regular (periodical) distances from each other in the chromatin DNA. This was a breakthrough discovery initiating a search for sequence patterns in the chromatin DNA. They had also pointed out that those dinucleotides repeated with the same period as the estimated pitch (the length of one DNA helix repeat) of the chromatin DNA (10.4 bp).

Another question closely related to the chromatin structure which Trifonov pursued to answer was the length of the DNA helical repeat (turn) within nucleosomes. It is known that in free DNA (i.e. DNA which is not part of a nucleosome), the DNA helix twists 360° per approximately 10.5 bp. In 1979, Trifonov and Thomas Bettecken estimated the length of a nucleosomal DNA repeat to be 10.33–10.4 bp. This value was finally confirmed and refined to 10.4 bp with crystallographic analysis in 2006.

At the beginning of his scientific career, Trifonov studied characteristics of the DNA with biophysical methods. After his relocation to Israel in 1976, he switched over to bioinformatics, and established the first research group for that discipline in the country. He is known for his innovative insights into the world of biological sequences.

Trifonov graduated in biophysics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1961 and earned his PhD degree in molecular biophysics there in 1970. He worked as a researcher at the Moscow Physico-Technical Institute from 1961 to 1964. Then he moved to the Biological Department at the I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow, staying there until 1975. After his immigration to Israel, he joined the Department of Polymer Research at The Weizmann Institute of Science as an associate professor. He worked there from 1976 to 1991 before moving to the Department of Structural Biology as a full professor in 1992. He was appointed professor emeritus in 2003. During that time, he was also a head of the Center for Genome Structure and Evolution at the Institute of Molecular Sciences in Palo Alto, California (1992–1995).

Edward Nikolayevich Trifonov (Hebrew: אדוארד טריפונוב, Russian: Эдуapд Тpифoнoв; b. March 31, 1937) is a Russian-born Israeli molecular biophysicist and a founder of Israeli bioinformatics. In his research, he specializes in the recognition of weak signal patterns in biological sequences and is known for his unorthodox scientific methods.

Trifonov was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), USSR in 1937. He was raised by his mother, Riva, and his step-father, Nikolay Nikolayevich Trifonov. In his school years, he became interested in medicine and physics. As a result, he went to study biophysics in Moscow. He started his scientific career in the USSR. In 1976, he made aliyah (immigrated as a Jew) to Israel. His role model is Gregor Mendel.