CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO PROTEIN-STRUCTURE CLASSIFICATION

In a similar manner to sequence database searching, it is also possibl e to compare three-dimensional protein structures. Such methods can be extremely useful because a structural similarity may represent a dist ant evolutionary relationship that is undetectable by sequence analysi s. In this review, we summarise the most popular structure comparison methods, show how they can be used for database searching, and then de scribe some of the most advanced attempts to develop comprehensive pro tein structure classifications. With such data, it is possible to iden tify distant evolutionary relationships, provide libraries of unique f olds for structure prediction, estimate the total number of folds that exist, and investigate the preference for certain types of structures over others. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.