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MACROMOLECULAR STRUCTURE DETERMINATION BY NMR SPECTROSCOPY
Bioinformatics plays an important role in biomolecular structure determination by NMR spectroscopy. Increasingly, structural biology is being driven by information gained from gene sequencing and hypotheses derived from bioinformatics approaches. This is particularly so for structural proteomics efforts. A major rationale for structural proteomics is that a more complete mapping of peptide sequence space onto conformational space will lead to efficiencies in determining structure-function relationships (Burley, 2000; Heinemann, 2000; Terwilliger, 2000; Yokoyama, 2000). Longer range scientific goals are the prediction of structure and function from sequence and simulations of the functions of a living cell. Structural proteomics is part of a wider functional genomics effort, which promises to assign functions to proteins within complex biological pathways and to enlarge the understanding and appreciation of complex biological phenomena (Thornton et al., 2000). Because of its potential to greatly broaden the targets for new pharmaceuticals, structural proteomics is expected to join combinatorial chemistry and screening as an integral approach to modern drug discovery (Dry, McCarthy, and Harris, 2000). It is clear that much larger databases of structures, dynamic properties ...
