A straightforward method for predicting the protein structure is to fi
nd conformations that have the lowest energy along a chosen folding pa
thway, One approach in this direction is to produce a large number of
structures by varying the dihedral angles of the molecule more or less
randomly and then to screen each one using a suitable energy function
, This procedure is computationally demanding, but by using a more rea
listic model, one hopes that the folding behavior one observes in calc
ulations may better mimic the actual folding process in nature, The me
thod is beginning to yield interesting results, thanks to the increase
in the computational power but also to the intelligent selection of t
he folding pathway, This article reviews general features of this meth
od, some important highlights of the particular procedure we used, and
some of the more significant results obtained to date in our laborato
ry, The results are highly encouraging and indicate the direction of f
uture effort that is most likely to be fruitful.