Exploring structure space. A protein structure initiative.

The genome projects are changing biology by providing the genetic blueprints of entire organisms. The blueprints are tantalizing but we cannot deduce everything we need to know from them, including the structures and detailed functions of proteins. In this paper we describe an approach for obtaining structural information about proteins on a genomic scale. We describe how structural and functional information might eventually be put together to form a basis for describing life at many levels. We then describe how structural information fits into this picture and classes of proteins for which structural information would be useful in a genomic context. We conclude with a proposal for an initiative to determine protein structures on a very large scale.