Datasheet
Protein bioinformatics covered in this book
The study of protein sequences can get pretty complicated — so compli-
cated, in fact, that it would take a pretty thick book to cover all aspects of
the field. We’d like to take a more selective approach by focusing on those
aspects of protein sequences where bioinformatic analyses can be most
useful. The following list gives you a look at some topics where such an
analysis is particularly relevant to protein sequences — and also tells
which chapters of this book cover those topics in greater detail:
Retrieving protein sequences from databases (Chapters 2, 3, and 4)
Computing amino-acid composition, molecular weight, isoelectric point,
and other parameters (Chapter 6)
Computing how hydrophobic or hydrophilic a protein is, predicting anti-
genic sites, locating membrane-spanning segments (Chapter 6)
Predicting elements of secondary structure (Chapters 6 and 11)
Predicting the domain organization of proteins (Chapters 6, 7, 9, and 11)
Visualizing protein structures in 3-D (Chapter 11)
Predicting a protein’s 3-D structure from its sequence (Chapter 11)
Figure 1-3:
Example of
protein 3-D
structure
(schematic).
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Part I: Getting Started in Bioinformatics
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