Emerging Topics in Structural Biology
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Macromolecules".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 December 2022) | Viewed by 26596
Special Issue Editors
Interests: structural biology; protein crystallography; cryo-electron microscopy; bacterial proteins; Helicobacter pylori; transport proteins
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: structural biology; cancers; epigenetics; demethylation; transcription regulation; viral polymerase; drug discovery
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Since the determination of the first 3D crystal structure of myoglobin in 1958, protein crystallography has developed into a quite mature structural biology technique, solving ~87% of structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Moreover, in the last few years, two events have revolutionized the field of structural biology: the “resolution revolution” of cryo-electron Microscopy (cryo-EM), which allows the visualization of single particles at a near-atomic resolution without the need of growing them in a crystalline form, and the recent development of AlphaFold 2, an AI system able to predict the 3D structure of a single protein with high reliability. This last event will strongly influence crystallography since that most of the future crystal structures will be solved using the molecular replacement technique. In parallel, new techniques/methods are emerging in crystallography, such as new crystal growing methods, more intense and focused X-ray beams, novel data collection methods, ultra-sensitive detectors, advanced computational algorithms, and new software.
It is easy to foresee that in the next few years, the application of these techniques will revolutionize our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of cell biology, with a wide impact spanning across biochemistry, life science, and medicine. The present Special Issue is aimed at summarizing frontier technologies and methodological advances in the field, as well as structures and functions of special proteins or protein complexes, to take stock of the present situation and to create a virtual forum for the future of Structural Biology.
Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Zanotti
Prof. Dr. Zhongzhou Chen
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- protein crystallography
- structural biology
- high-throughput crystallography
- cryo-EM
- NMR
- radiation sources
- X-ray detectors
- structure determination
- molecular mechanism
- functions
- drug discovery
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