COUPLING THE FOLDING OF HOMOLOGOUS PROTEINS

The empirical observation that homologous proteins fold to similar str uctures is used to enhance the capabilities of an ab initio algorithm to predict protein conformations. A penalty function that forces homol ogous proteins to look alike is added to the potential and is employed in the coupled energy optimization of several homologous proteins. Si gnificant improvement in the quality of the computed structures (as co mpared with the computational folding of a single protein) is demonstr ated and discussed.