Mission Statement

One of the main skills of our group is on comparative modeling of proteins. Besides structural characterization of a 3D modeled protein, we are involved in the development of tools to help modelers, like classification of protein loops on several protein datasets and description of protein motifs involved in functional signatures or foldability. The description of function by means of sequence/structure relationships is a challenge on the post-genomic era in which Structural Genomics initiatives identify the protein conformation before knowledge of function is achieved. The data mining on structural and sequence databases lead bioinformaticians and computational biologists to the development of prediction strategies. Also, structures of macromolecules (i.e. molecular machines) could provide quantitative parameters or help to elucidate functional networks. Although the deep knowledge of biological networks is crucial, still the validation of some interactions obtained by high-throughput, the prediction of in vivo interactions experimentally not found and the characterization of protein-protein binding interfaces and its strength, are unsolved problems. The intention of this group is to deepen in the characterization of the conformational properties to achieve such predictions.