VOLTAGE-GATED ION CHANNEL PROTEIN RESOURCE DATABASE

电压门控通道是物质进出细胞的一种方式。它们在生物学中很重要。通道可以是打开的，也可以是关闭的；这种转换称为门控。然而，这些蛋白质不易结晶，必须开发二维方法来考虑它们的结构。每个通道蛋白由六个疏水跨膜段和一个膜插入区组成。预测或至少建立这些跨膜蛋白的良好模型的能力是研究界的一个重要需求。这方面的技巧现在才刚刚开始。目前，由于难以结晶，PDB中没有与VGC蛋白很好的同源物。然而，序列对齐是可能的。三维蛋白质同源模型将从这些对齐的序列开发，使用各种软件包由该小组开发。最终的工具将在网上提供。一旦建立了第一个模型，所有类似排列的蛋白质都可以自动预测。这项工作将产生可用于改进来自考虑膜蛋白的新研究和方法的结构数据的模型。

Voltage gated channels are one of the ways that materials move into and out of cells. They are important across biology. A channel can either be open or closed; the transition is called gating. However, these proteins do not crystallize easily and two-dimensional methods have had to be developed to consider their structure. Each channel protein consists of six hydrophobic membrane-spanning segments and a membrane insertion region. The ability to predict or at least have good models for these transmembrane proteins is a significant need for the research community. The techniques for this are now just beginning. At the moment, there are no good homologues to VGC proteins in the PDB, because of the difficulty of crystallization. However, alignment of sequence is possible. Three-dimensional protein homology models will be developed from these aligned sequences, using a variety of software packages developed by the group. The resulting tools will be available on the web. Once the first models are made, all similarly aligned proteins can be automatically predicted. This effort will produce models that could be used to refine the structure data coming from new studies and methods of considering membrane proteins.