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Searching protein structure databases has come of age
Proteins
|July 1, 1994
Summary
The number of known protein structures has rapidly grown, enabling new computer algorithms to compare structures and find biological relationships, even without sequence similarity. This advances protein structure analysis and discovery.
Area of Science:
- Structural biology
- Bioinformatics
- Computational biology
Background:
- The number of experimentally determined protein structures has surged, with over 1000 available by 1994.
- Advances in protein engineering, crystallography, and spectroscopy accelerate the determination of new protein structures.
- Increasingly, novel protein structures exhibit similar folds to known ones, irrespective of sequence homology.
Purpose of the Study:
- To highlight the growing importance of protein structure comparison.
- To introduce new computational tools for analyzing protein structural data.
- To demonstrate the utility of structure-based comparisons for biological discovery.
Main Methods:
- Development of novel computer algorithms for routine protein structure comparison.
- Creation of comprehensive databases of known protein structures.
- Utilizing structure database searches to identify relationships between proteins.
Main Results:
- New algorithms enable routine comparison of newly determined protein structures against extensive databases.
- Structure database searches are becoming a daily tool in biological research.
- These searches are emerging as a powerful alternative to sequence database searches for uncovering biological relationships.
Conclusions:
- Protein structure comparison is a rapidly advancing field with significant implications for biological discovery.
- Computational tools for structure analysis are becoming as vital as sequence analysis tools.
- Structure-based comparisons offer a unique avenue for identifying functionally or evolutionarily related proteins, even in the absence of sequence similarity.