Protein function prediction from structure in structural genomics and its contribution to the study of health and disease

The various structural genomics projects throughout the globe have developed high-throughput protein structure determination pipelines which have been responsible for the deposition of a vast number of protein structures. As a consequence of the need for rapid data release and their target selection strategy, these projects have deposited a large number of proteins with little or no functional information. As the experimental characterization of protein function is expensive and time consuming, the bio-informatics community was prompted to address the problem of protein function prediction from sequence and structure. Over the years many methods have been developed and show varying degrees of success. Here we will discuss the main types of approach, the problems faced and, with examples from the Midwest Center for Structural Genomics (MCSG), illustrate how these structures and the techniques developed can have a significant impact on the study of health and disease