Genome Annotation and Protein Structure

Structural genomics aims to provide a goodexperimental structure or computational model of everytractable protein in a complete genome. Underlying thisgoal is the immense value of protein structure,especially in permitting recognition of distantevolutionary relationships for proteins whose sequenceanalysis has failed to find any significant homologue. Aconsiderable fraction of the genes in all sequencedgenomes have no known function, and structuredetermination provides a direct means of revealinghomology that may be used to infer their putativemolecular function. The solved structures will besimilarly useful for elucidating the biochemical orbiophysical role of proteins that have been previouslyascribed only phenotypic functions. More generally,knowledge of an increasingly complete repertoire ofprotein structures will aid structure prediction methods,improve understanding of protein structure, andultimately lend insight into molecular interactions andpathways.References (available from compbio.berkeley.edu): 1. Brenner SE. A tour of structural genomics. NatureReviews Genetics 2:801-9 (2001). 2. Zupicich J, Brenner SE, Skarnes WC. Computationalprediction of membrane-tethered transcriptions factors.Genome Biology2: research0050.1-0050.6 (2001)3. Brenner SE, Levitt M. Expectations from structuralgenomics. Protein Sci. 9:197-200 (2000).4. Brenner SE. Errors in genome annotation. Trends inGenetics 15:132-133 (1999).5. Brenner SE, Chothia C, Hubbard TJP. Populationstatistics of protein structures. Current Opinion inStructural Biology 7:369-376 (1997)6. Murzin AG, Brenner SE, Hubbard T, Chothia C. SCOP: a structural classification of proteins database for the investigation of sequences andstructures. Journal ofMolecular Biology 247:536-540 (1995). Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Society Bioinformatics Conference (CSB’02)0-7695-1653-X/02 $17.00 © 2002 IEEE