EMBL-EBI, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK.
Curr Opin Struct Biol. 2012 Oct;22(5):594-601. doi: 10.1016/j.sbi.2012.07.005. Epub 2012 Aug 9.
With the huge volume in genomic sequences being generated from high-throughout sequencing projects the requirement for providing accurate and detailed annotations of gene products has never been greater. It is proving to be a huge challenge for computational biologists to use as much information as possible from experimental data to provide annotations for genome data of unknown function. A central component to this process is to use experimentally determined structures, which provide a means to detect homology that is not discernable from just the sequence and permit the consequences of genomic variation to be realized at the molecular level. In particular, structures also form the basis of many bioinformatics methods for improving the detailed functional annotations of enzymes in combination with similarities in sequence and chemistry.
随着高通量测序项目产生的基因组序列数量巨大，对基因产物进行准确和详细注释的需求从未如此之大。对于计算生物学家来说，利用尽可能多的实验数据信息来为未知功能的基因组数据提供注释，这是一个巨大的挑战。这个过程的一个核心组成部分是使用实验确定的结构，这为检测仅从序列无法识别的同源性提供了一种手段，并允许在分子水平上认识到基因组变异的后果。特别是，结构也构成了许多生物信息学方法的基础，这些方法结合序列和化学的相似性，提高了对酶的详细功能注释。
