Prediction of quaternary structure from primary structure

The 'sequence implies conformation' principle has been the motivation for the construction of numerous systems of secondary and tertiary structure prediction. Computational experiments have shown that this principle can now be extended to quaternary structure prediction. This work appears to be the first effort to predict quaternary structure properties from sequence.

The software developed to conduct these experiments was the Quaternary Structure Explorer (QSE). Successful rule-based classifiers have been found that can discriminate between the primary sequences of homodimers and non-homodimers.