Molecular Modeling in the Genomics Era

Molecular Modeling, Visualization, and Structure Prediction Software (Additional material not included in the print edition)

Courtesy of Theoretical Biophysics Group Beckman Institute University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The photosynthetic reaction center of the purple bacterium, Rhodopseudomonas viridis (rendered using VMD)

The aim of some life science researchers is to understand human physiology and the various diseases and mutations that can cause the body to go haywire. Accomplishing this goal requires a thorough understanding of the workhorse of all biological systems, the protein. Currently, a tremendous amount of effort is spent on proteomics research as scientists map protein-protein interactions (proteomics tools and technologies will be profiled in LabConsumer on April 2, 2001). Yet there is also a push to map the structural features of proteins, and the structural basis of protein-protein, protein-ligand, and protein-drug interactions. This effort requires the development and enhancement of software capable of carrying out molecular modeling, structure...