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Ab-Initio Protein Structure Prediction

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In this type of protein structure prediction 3-D models are built absolutely from scratch . It makes use of physical principle rather than previously solved structures. Prediction is done with no information about protein except amino acid sequence . The computer simulates physical process and forces that drive proteins into native conformation . About Protein Folding : Each specific sequence of polypeptide yields only single , compact, biologically active fold in native state . This fold generally has many sub-states with minor structural differences between them, but all of these sub-states have the same general fold . In other words, under physiological conditions there appears to be one conformation for a given amino acid sequence that has a significantly lower free energy than any other . So, one can search all possible conformation in random fashion until we get lower energy conformation of native state . But this seems to be impossible : Each peptide group has 3 possible co