Motivation for Protein 3D Structure Prediction

The structure of the protein is directly related to the protein's functionality, probably even determining it. The reasons for research of 3D structure are:

• Medicine - Understanding biological functions. Binding and unbinding of proteins constitute much of the cellular activity of living organisms.
• Finding "targets" for docking drugs.
• Agriculture - Genetic engineering of better and richer crops.
• Industry - Synthesis of enzymes (e.g. detergents).

The main reasons for using 3D comparison algorithms (instead of using, for example, AA sequence comparison algorithm) are:

• Protein 3D structure is more highly conserved than the primary structure.
• We can learn about similar function out of just partial surface similarity (e.g. active sites)