Methodologies for target selection in structural genomics

As the number of complete genomes that have been sequenced keeps growing, u nknown areas of the protein space are revealed and new horizons open up. Mo st of this information will be fully appreciated only when the structural i nformation about the encoded proteins becomes available. The goal of struct ural genomics is to direct large-scale efforts of protein structure determi nation, so as to increase the impact of these efforts. This review focuses on current approaches in structural genomics aimed at selecting representat ive proteins as targets for structure determination. We will discuss the co ncept of representative structures/folds, the current methodologies for ide ntifying those proteins, and computational techniques for identifying prote ins which are expected to adopt new structural folds. (C) 2000 Elsevier Sci ence Ltd. All rights reserved.