Progress and challenges in protein structure prediction

Curr Opin Struct Biol. 2008 Jun;18(3):342-8. doi: 10.1016/j.sbi.2008.02.004. Epub 2008 Apr 22.

Abstract

Depending on whether similar structures are found in the PDB library, the protein structure prediction can be categorized into template-based modeling and free modeling. Although threading is an efficient tool to detect the structural analogs, the advancements in methodology development have come to a steady state. Encouraging progress is observed in structure refinement which aims at drawing template structures closer to the native; this has been mainly driven by the use of multiple structure templates and the development of hybrid knowledge-based and physics-based force fields. For free modeling, exciting examples have been witnessed in folding small proteins to atomic resolutions. However, predicting structures for proteins larger than 150 residues still remains a challenge, with bottlenecks from both force field and conformational search.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Models, Molecular
  • Protein Conformation*
  • Proteins / chemistry*

Substances

  • Proteins