Sequence, Structure, Function: An Insider's View on Protein Structural Genomics

by Dr Marco Punta (TUM-IAS, Munich, Germany)

Thursday 24 Mar 2011, 14:30 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

Structural knowledge is critical for understanding and being able to tamper with protein function at the molecular level. From its inception ten years ago, Structural Genomics (SG) has greatly contributed to the increase of structural coverage of the protein sequence space and to the development of new methods that accelerate structure determination. In the first part of this talk, I will discuss my experience of several years in SG with a particular focus on recent advances in the study of challenging targets, such as membrane proteins. Overall, as of January 2011, SG has deposited close to 10,000 structures into the public domain, with one particular twist regarding their annotation: a significant fraction of these structures are for proteins of unknown function. In the talk's second part, I will argue that these proteins represent an important, yet still largely untapped, resource. Protein discoveries may be just a click (or two) away.