Recent developments in computational proteomics

The mapping of the human genome was completed earlier this year and efforts are underway to understand the role of gene products (i.e. proteins) in biological pathways and human disease and to exploit their functional roles to derive protein therapeutics and protein-based drugs. A key component to the next revolution in the 'post-genomic' era will be the increasingly widespread use of protein structure in rational experimental design. Improvements in quality, availability and utility of large-scale three- and four-dimensional protein structural information are enabling a revolution in rational design, having particular impact on drug discovery and optimization. New computational methodologies now yield modeled structures that are, in many cases, quantitatively comparable with crystal structures, at a fraction of the cost.