De novo protein structure prediction

In computational biology, de novo protein structure prediction refers to an algorithmic process by which protein tertiary structure is predicted from its amino acid primary sequence. The problem itself has occupied leading scientists for decades while still remaining unsolved. According to Science, the problem remains one of the top 125 outstanding issues in modern science. At present, some of the most successful methods have a reasonable probability of predicting the folds of small, single-domain proteins within 1.5 angstroms over the entire structure.

De novo methods tend to require vast computational resources, and have thus only been carried out for relatively small proteins. De novo protein structure modeling is distinguished from Template-based modeling (TBM) by the fact that no solved homologue to the protein of interest is used, making efforts to predict protein structure from amino acid sequence exceedingly difficult. Prediction of protein structure de novo for larger proteins will require better algorithms and larger computational resources such as those afforded by either powerful supercomputers (such as Blue Gene or MDGRAPE-3) or distributed computing projects (such as Folding@home, Rosetta@home, the Human Proteome Folding Project, or Nutritious Rice for the World). Although computational barriers are vast, the potential benefits of structural genomics (by predicted or experimental methods) to fields such as medicine and drug design make de novo structure prediction an active research field.