Bioinformatics. Construction of protein 3D structure prediction system

Protein 3D structure prediction from amino acid sequence is a difficult issue, and has not been solved for 50 years. From the viewpoint of physicochemistry, the causes of this difficulty lie in: (1) the difficulty in an efficient conformational searching, and (2) the difficulty in finding an accurate algorithm to calculate potential energy of the native state. The simplicities of the problem have been attracted a lot of researchers. While many scholars research this difficult problem, Kobe University, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, and Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute cooperate to develop the system that enables to get extremely precise protein structures. Here, we report the part that Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute takes charge of in the system. (author)