All About Bioinformatics

Chapter 6: Structural bioinformatics

Abstract

Structural bioinformatics is an area of bioinformatics that focuses on the characterization and modeling of biological macromolecules, such as proteins, RNA, and DNA, in three dimensions. It involves both empirically determined structures and computational tools to generalize macromolecular three-dimensional structures, such as comparisons of overall folds and local motifs, molecular folding principles, evolutionary relationships, binding dynamics, and structure and function connections. The primary objective of structural bioinformatics is to provide novel methods for analyzing biological macromolecular data in order to solve biological problems and uncover new information. For instance, structural ...