Understanding the cell in terms of structure and function: insights from structural genomics

Structural genomics programs are only now moving into the large-scale production phase, yet have already produced around 2000 protein structures. Through a widespread if not exclusive emphasis on structural novelty, our knowledge of the protein fold universe is improving rapidly. With this information comes the challenge of structure-based function annotation for the many target proteins about which little or nothing is known. Recent years have therefore seen the emergence of impressively diverse bioinformatics approaches to predict the function of a protein structure. Attention is now turning to means of combining these predictions with information from various other sources.