The role of protein structure in genomics

The genome projects produce an enormous amount of sequence data that needs to be annotated in terms of molecular structure and biological function. Th ese tasks have triggered additional initiatives like structural genomics, T he intention is to determine as many protein structures as possible, in the most efficient way, and to exploit the solved structures for the assignmen t of biological function to hypothetical proteins, We discuss the impact of these developments on protein classification, gene function prediction, an d protein structure prediction. (C) 2000 Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.