3D PROTEIN FOLDS - HOMOLOGS AGAINST ERRORS - A SIMPLE ESTIMATE BASED ON THE RANDOM ENERGY-MODEL

One cannot predict the 3D structure of a protein directly from its seq uence because of errors in the energy estimates. However, using a set of homologs (proteins with nearly identical 3D structures despite nume rous amino acid mutations in their chains) it is possible to average t he fold energies over the homologs (this diminishes energy errors) and to predict the common 3D fold of these proteins from the set of their amino acid sequences.