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Science 21 November 2003:
Vol. 302. no. 5649, pp. 1347 - 1348
DOI: 10.1126/science.1092492
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Perspectives

STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY:
Learning to Speak the Language of Proteins

David T. Jones

Structural biologists have spent decades pondering the protein-folding problem, which seeks to explain how a simple string of amino acids self-assembles into a complex three-dimensional folded protein. In his Perspective, Jones explores progress in this arena, discussing the leap forward made by Kuhlman et al. These investigators have designed a protein from scratch on the computer and then synthesized and analyzed it in atomic detail using x-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy. The synthesized version of their new protein matches the computer prediction, representing a big step forward for the field of structural biology.

The author is in the Department of Computer Science and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University College, London WC1E 6BT, UK. E-mail: dtj{at}cs.ucl.ac.uk

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Molecular Embodiments and the Body-work of Modeling in Protein Crystallography.
N. Myers (2008)
Social Studies of Science 38, 163-199
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)