Biological Function Made Crystal Clear - Annotation of Hypothetical Proteins via Structural Genomics

Published

February 1, 2000

Author(s)

Edward Eisenstein, G L. Gilliland, O Herzberg, J Moult, J Orban, R Poljak, L Banerjei, D Richardson, A J. Howard

Abstract

Many of the gene products of completely sequenced organisms are hypothetical - they cannot be related to any previously characterized proteins - and so are of completely unknown function. Structural studies provide one means of obtaining functional information in these cases. A structural genomics project is described that is aimed at determining the structures of 50 hypothetical proteins from Haemophilus influenzae to leverage an understanding of their function. Each stage of the project - target selection, protein production, crystallization, structure determination, and structure analysis - makes use of recent advances to streamline procedures. Early results from this and similar projects are encouraging in that some level of functional understanding can be deduced from experimentally solved structures.

Citation

Current Opinion in Biotechnology

Volume

11

Issue

No. 1

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

hypothetical proteins, microbial Genome annotation, NMR spectroscopy, structural genomics, X-ray crystallography

Citation

Eisenstein, E. , Gilliland, G. , Herzberg, O. , Moult, J. , Orban, J. , Poljak, R. , Banerjei, L. , Richardson, D. and Howard, A. (2000), Biological Function Made Crystal Clear - Annotation of Hypothetical Proteins via Structural Genomics, Current Opinion in Biotechnology (Accessed October 18, 2025)