What about stucture?
There has long been controversy over the relationship between sequence and structure and the extent to which the one is determined by or determines the other. Is it better to analyse sequence or structure? Well, the fact is that there is a very large amount more sequence data than structural data available, largely because of the differing costs of data generation. There are also technical obstacles to providing high resolution structural data for many classes of proteins.
Thus, the analysis of sequence data, enlightened by structural data where available, can provide a valuable tool in the armoury of the researcher. Examples of applications include:
- candidate gene selection in a complex disease system for a drug discovery project
- choosing representative proteins for a selectivity screen
- prioritising targets for a high-throughput screening campaign
- developing a catalogue system for driving a reagent sales web-site