AUTOMATED MODELING OF THE TRANSMEMBRANE REGION OF G-PROTEIN COUPLED RECEPTOR BY SWISS-MODEL

Molecular modelling of the transmembrane helices of G-protein coupled receptors is an increasingly used method to identify the possible thre e-dimensional environment of key residues. Thereby site-directed mutag enesis experiments, aimed at the understanding of the receptor-ligand interactions, can be designed in a rational way. The modelling methods are however not generally available to experimentalists, and often re quire expensive software and hardware. To overcome these limitations, we have constructed a World Wide Web server for the automated protein modelling of user-defined transmembrane helices. The service is freely available at this address: http://expasy.hcuge.ch/swissmod/SWISS-MODE L.html.