GENERATION OF PSEUDONATIVE PROTEIN STRUCTURES FOR THREADING

The threading approach to protein structure prediction suffers from th e limited number of substantially different folds available as templat es, A method is presented for the generation of artificial protein str uctures, amenable to threading, by modification of native ones, The ar tificial structures so generated are compared to the native ones and i t is shown that, within the accuracy of the pseudoenergy function or f orce field used, these two types of structures appear equally useful f or threading Since a multitude of pseudonative artificial structures c an be generated per native structure, the pool of pseudonative templat e structures for threading can be enormously enlarged by the inclusion of the pseudonative artificial structures. (C) 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.