Reconstruction of 3D Structures from Protein Contact Maps

Proteins are large organic compounds made of amino acids arranged in a linear chain (primary structure). Most proteins fold into unique threedimensional (3D) structures called interchangeably tertiary, folded, or native structures. Discovering the tertiary structure of a protein (Protein Folding Problem) can provide important clues about how the protein performs its function and it is one of the most important problems in Bioinformatics. A contact map of a given protein P is a binary matrix M such that Mi,j = 1 iff the physical distance between amino acids i and j in the native structure is less than or equal to a pre-assigned threshold t. The contact map of each protein is a distinctive signature of its folded structure. Predicting the tertiary structure of a protein directly from its primary structure is a very complex and still unsolved problem. An alternative and probably more feasible approach is to predict the contact map of a protein from its primary structure and then to comput...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ISBRA
• Authors: Marco Vassura, Luciano Margara, Filippo Medri, Pietro di Lena, Piero Fariselli, Rita Casadio
• Keywords: Bioinformatics, Contact Map, ISBRA 2007, Proteins, Tertiary Structure