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Multi-target Parallel Processing Approach for Gene-to-structure Determination of the Influenza Polymerase PB2 Subunit

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Published on: June 28, 2013

Structural genomics is the largest contributor of novel structural leverage.

Rajesh Nair¹, Jinfeng Liu, Ta-Tsen Soong

¹Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.

Journal of Structural and Functional Genomics

|February 6, 2009

Summary

The Protein Structural Initiative (PSI) significantly boosts structural genomics by systematically targeting protein families. This effort increases novel protein structure coverage, accelerating our understanding of the protein universe.

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Area of Science:

Structural Biology
Genomics
Biochemistry

Background:

The Protein Structural Initiative (PSI) at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds large-scale structural genomics centers.
These centers aim to systematically address protein families lacking structural coverage.

Purpose of the Study:

To evaluate the success of PSI efforts in optimizing structural coverage and increasing novel protein structure data.
To assess the contribution of structural genomics to the growth rate of protein structure databases.

Main Methods:

Analysis of structural data deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB).
Calculation of metrics to quantify structural coverage and novel leverage.
Comparison of PSI contributions versus non-PSI structural biology efforts.

Main Results:

PSI-2 contributed over 20% of novel structures to the PDB, despite representing only 8% of all deposited structures.
Structural genomics has significantly maintained the linear growth rate of protein structure coverage since 1992.
PSI's per-structure contribution to novel leverage was over four-fold higher than non-PSI efforts.

Conclusions:

Systematic targeting of large protein families by PSI has successfully increased novel structure leverage.
Continued PSI success could lead to coverage of most UniProt sequences within approximately 15 years.