Protein design is a valuable tool for understanding the fundamental factors that dictate
protein structure and function. The field of protein design has seen significant progress over …

Background: The recent flood of data from genome sequences and functional genomics has
given rise to new field, bioinformatics, which combines elements of biology and computer …

The eightfold (βα) barrel structure, first observed in triose-phosphate isomerase, occurs
ubiquitously in nature. It is nearly always an enzyme and most often involved in molecular or …

We present an analysis of the residues directly involved in catalysis in 178 enzyme active
sites. Specific criteria were derived to define a catalytic residue, and used to create a …

Many biochemical processes exploit the extraordinary versatility of flavoenzymes and their
flavin cofactors. Flavoproteins are now known to have a variety of folding topologies but a …

The recent growth in protein databases has revealed the functional diversity of many protein
superfamilies. We have assessed the functional variation of homologous enzyme …

Synthetic gene circuits are designed to program new biological behaviour, dynamics and
logic control. For all but the simplest synthetic phenotypes, this requires a structured …

Despite the practically unlimited number of possible protein sequences, the number of basic
shapes in which proteins fold seems not only to be finite, but also to be relatively small, with …

Hemes remain one of the most visible and versatile classes of cofactors utilized in biology. 1
Since their discovery, the structural and functional aspects of heme proteins have fascinated …

The plethora of biological functions that sustain life is rooted in the remarkable evolvability of
proteins. An emerging view highlights the importance of a protein's initial state in dictating …