Structure-based Methods for Computational Protein Functional Site Prediction

Due to the advent of high throughput sequencing techniques and structural genomic projects, the number of gene and protein sequences has been ever increasing. Computational methods to annotate these genes and proteins are even more indispensable. Proteins are important macromolecules and study of the function of proteins is an important problem in structural bioinformatics. This paper discusses a number of methods to predict protein functional site especially focusing on protein ligand binding site prediction. Initially, a short overview is presented on recent advances in methods for selection of homologous sequences. Furthermore, a few recent structural based approaches and sequence-and-structure based approaches for protein functional sites are discussed in details.