MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF ANIMAL VIRUSES AND CELLS BY COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS

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The basis of diseases and of their treatments resides in knowledge and comprehension of the three-dimensional structures of proteins, nucleic acids and other molecules. The availability of atomic-level structures, advances made in understanding their mechanisms, and highly efficient computational methodology that we have developed enables us to investigate binding sites on molecular surfaces of receptors, and to dock a ligand unto a receptor surface, which will be useful in the design of potent inhibitors. We have recently developed and continue to improve highly effective descriptions of molecular surfaces that are successfully and efficiently utilized for docking molecules ranging in size from small drugs to macromolecules. Using our sequence-order independent, computer-vision based methods, interior and surface motifs have been detected and catalogued. Using similar tools, a dataset of protein-protein interfaces was made and utilized for studies of protein associations and their comparison to protein folding. Comparisons of this dataset to a dataset of protein monomers, generated earlier, illustrates the similarities and differences between the types of architectures at interfaces and in single-chain proteins. Theoretical chemical methods are incorporated into the analyses and show that hydrophilic effects are more important than hydrophobic forces in interfaces. An efficient computational algorithm designed for cutting proteins into highly hydrophobic, compact, subdomain modules is used to produce a database of folding units that will provide deeper insights into the architecture of proteins and how they are assembled. RNA structure and function, no less important than that of proteins, is studied using thermodynamics-based algorithms for secondary structure and molecular mechanics and dynamics for three-dimensional predictive modelling. Correlations drawn with experimental data from mutagenesis and NMR show successful agreement in retroviral ribosomal frameshifting. Internal ribosome entry in 5' untranslated regions (5' URT), a hallmark of picornaviruses, correlates with conserved, predicted structural elements. Similar elements are predicted in some 5'UTR's of cellular mRNA's. Refinements in predictive methods are continually developed.