Structure-Based Functional Genomics
Workshop Concept

Structural Genomics

The genome sequencing projects are providing vast quantities of new information that is changing the way that biological research is done. In particular, this genomic information will make a tremendous impact on the field of structural biology, creating a new area of scientific investigation which could be called "structural genomics" or "structure-based functional genomics".

Functional Genomics

One of the major problems of genomics involves the identification of biochemical and cellular functions of novel gene products, i.e. functional genomics. While significant progress has been made in discovering gene function using sequence homologies between new genes and genes of known function, a significant fraction of novel genes are "orphan" in the sense that their gene products do not share reliably-detected sequence similarity with gene products of known function.

Important Functional Genomics Approaches

Three-dimensional structural homology can often be used to identify functional relationships between gene products that have very limited sequence homology. This is because both structure and function are preserved over longer evolutionary distances than overall sequence similarity. Indeed, sequence similarly is simply an easily-detected clue that implies an underlying structural similarity. Thus "structural bioinformatics" approaches that try to establish functional relationships between gene products by three-dimensional structural comparisons may provide an important approach to the functional genomics challenge.

Another important issue centers around developing a "basis set" of chain folds that can be used for homology modeling, threading, and analysis of structural evolution. How many common protein folds exist in nature? What effort will be required to determine this basis set of protein folds?

 
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Technology Development

The Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University has recently received a grant from the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology (NJ-CST). This "Initiative in Structural Bioinformatics" supports work to develop technologies for (i) identifying targets suitable for analysis by "structural bioinformatics" from genomic sequence information, (ii) development of protein expression, NMR methodology, X-ray methodology, and informatics technologies for "high throughput" analysis of protein structures and functions, and (iii) analysis of the structures and functions of gene products involved in human disease by experimental and theoretical approaches. In addition to research support, this NJ-CST grant also provides partial funding for organizing an annual meeting or workshop in the general areas of structural bioinformatics and functional genomics.

Additional support for this 1998 workshop is being provided by the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund and by the Merck Genomics Research Institute.

Development of New Structure-Based Bioinformatics Field

The workshop will bring together some key people working in the fields of bioinformatics, genomics, protein structure prediction, domain parsing, high-level protein expression, protein structure analysis by X-ray and NMR spectroscopy, automated analysis of X-ray and NMR data, and structural database searching. The aim is to use this forum to enhance the development of this nascent field of "structure-based bioinformatics".
 
 

We believe that this research area will have particularly strong interest to the pharmaceutical research community, and will therefore have special value for the New Jersey pharmaceutical industry. This is why the New Jersey Commision on Science and Technology, a division of the commerce department, is interested in supporting this research area.
 
 

This workshop will be an annual event sponsored by our Initiative in Structural Bioinformatics.

 
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