This book is the first one specifically dedicated to the structural bioinformatics of membrane proteins. With a focus on membrane proteins from the perspective of bioinformatics, the present work covers a broad spectrum of topics in evolution, structure, function, and bioinformatics of membrane proteins focusing on the most recent experimental results. Leaders in the field who have recently reported breakthrough advances cover algorithms, databases and their applications to the subject. The increasing number of recently solved membrane protein structures makes the expert coverage presented here very timely. Structural bioinformatics of membrane proteins has been an active area of research over the last thee decades and proves to be a growing field of interest.

This book is the first one specifically dedicated to the structural bioinformatics of membrane proteins. With a focus on membrane proteins from the perspective of bioinformatics, the present work covers a broad spectrum of topics in evolution, structure, function, and bioinformatics of membrane proteins focusing on the most recent experimental results. Leaders in the field who have recently reported breakthrough advances cover algorithms, databases and their applications to the subject. The increasing number of recently solved membrane protein structures makes the expert coverage presented here very timely. Structural bioinformatics of membrane proteins has been an active area of research over the last thee decades and proves to be a growing field of interest.

While the genomic revolution has quickly led to the deposit of more than 30,000 structures in the protein data bank (PDB), less than one percent of those contributions represent membrane proteins despite the fact that membrane proteins constitute some 20 percent of all proteins. This discrepancy becomes significantly troublesome when it is coupled

This textbook provides a strong foundation and a clear overview for students of membrane biology and an invaluable synthesis of cutting-edge research for working scientists. The text retains its clear and engaging style, providing a solid background in membrane biochemistry, while also incorporating the approaches of biophysics, genetics and cell biology to investigations of membrane structure, function and biogenesis to provide a unique overview of this fast-moving field. A wealth of new high resolution structures of membrane proteins are presented, including the Na/K pump and a receptor-G protein complex, offering exciting insights into how they function. All key tools of current membrane research are described, including detergents and model systems, bioinformatics, protein-folding methodology, crystallography and diffraction, and molecular modeling. This comprehensive and up-to-date text, emphasising the correlations between membrane research and human health, provides a solid foundation for all those working in this field.

Proteins lie at the heart of almost all biological processes and have an incredibly wide range of activities. Central to the function of all proteins is their ability to adopt, stably or sometimes transiently, structures that allow for interaction with other molecules. An understanding of the structure of a protein can therefore lead us to a much improved picture of its molecular function. This realisation has been a prime motivation of recent Structural Genomics projects, involving large-scale experimental determination of protein structures, often those of proteins about which little is known of function. These initiatives have, in turn, stimulated the massive development of novel methods for prediction of protein function from structure. Since model structures may also take advantage of new function prediction algorithms, the first part of the book deals with the various ways in which protein structures may be predicted or inferred, including specific treatment of membrane and intrinsically disordered proteins. A detailed consideration of current structure-based function prediction methodologies forms the second part of this book, which concludes with two chapters, focusing specifically on case studies, designed to illustrate the real-world application of these methods. With bang up-to-date texts from world experts, and abundant links to publicly available resources, this book will be invaluable to anyone who studies proteins and the endlessly fascinating relationship between their structure and function.

Structural Bioinformatics was the first major effort to show the application of the principles and basic knowledge of the larger field of bioinformatics to questions focusing on macromolecular structure, such as the prediction of protein structure and how proteins carry out cellular functions, and how the application of bioinformatics to these life science issues can improve healthcare by accelerating drug discovery and development. Designed primarily as a reference, the first edition nevertheless saw widespread use as a textbook in graduate and undergraduate university courses dealing with the theories and associated algorithms, resources, and tools used in the analysis, prediction, and theoretical underpinnings of DNA, RNA, and proteins. This new edition contains not only thorough updates of the advances in structural bioinformatics since publication of the first edition, but also features eleven new chapters dealing with frontier areas of high scientific impact, including: sampling and search techniques; use of mass spectrometry; genome functional annotation; and much more. Offering detailed coverage for practitioners while remaining accessible to the novice, Structural Bioinformatics, Second Edition is a valuable resource and an excellent textbook for a range of readers in the bioinformatics and advanced biology fields. Praise for the previous edition: "This book is a gold mine of fundamental and practical information in an area not previously well represented in book form." —Biochemistry and Molecular Education "... destined to become a classic reference work for workers at all levels in structural bioinformatics...recommended with great enthusiasm for educators, researchers, and graduate students." —BAMBED "...a useful and timely summary of a rapidly expanding field." —Nature Structural Biology "...a terrific job in this timely creation of a compilation of articles that appropriately addresses this issue." —Briefings in Bioinformatics

This book is about protein structural bioinformatics and how it can help understand and predict protein function. It covers structure-based methods that can assign and explain protein function based on overall folds, characteristics of protein surfaces, occurrence of small 3D motifs, protein-protein interactions and on dynamic properties. Such methods help extract maximum value from new experimental structures, but can often be applied to protein models. The book also, therefore, provides comprehensive coverage of methods for predicting or inferring protein structure, covering all structural classes from globular proteins and their membrane-resident counterparts to amyloid structures and intrinsically disordered proteins. The book is split into two broad sections, the first covering methods to generate or infer protein structure, the second dealing with structure-based function annotation. Each chapter is written by world experts in the field. The first section covers methods ranging from traditional homology modelling and fold recognition to fragment-based ab initio methods, and includes a chapter, new for the second edition, on structure prediction using evolutionary covariance. Membrane proteins and intrinsically disordered proteins are each assigned chapters, while two new chapters deal with amyloid structures and means to predict modes of protein-protein interaction. The second section includes chapters covering functional diversity within protein folds and means to assign function based on surface properties and recurring motifs. Further chapters cover the key roles of protein dynamics in protein function and use of automated servers for function inference. The book concludes with two chapters covering case studies of structure prediction, based respectively on crystal structures and protein models, providing numerous examples of real-world usage of the methods mentioned previously. This book is targeted at postgraduate students and academic researchers. It is most obviously of interest to protein bioinformaticians and structural biologists, but should also serve as a guide to biologists more broadly by highlighting the insights that structural bioinformatics can provide into proteins of their interest.