10.25394/PGS.12245843.v1
Xusi Han
Xusi
Han
Computational Methods for Protein Structure Comparison and Analysis
Purdue University Graduate School
2020
protein structure
cryo-EM
X-ray crystallography
3D Zernike Descriptors
Fast Fourier transform (FFT)
Protein Shape
structure alignment
Atomic Structure
electron density map
Computational Biology
Structural Biology
Biophysics
2020-05-05 01:27:24
Thesis
https://hammer.purdue.edu/articles/thesis/Computational_Methods_for_Protein_Structure_Comparison_and_Analysis/12245843
Proteins are involved in almost all functions in a living cell, and functions of proteins are realized by their tertiary structures. Protein three-dimensional structures can be solved by multiple experimental methods, but computational approaches serve as an important complement to experimental methods for comparing and analyzing protein structures. Protein structure comparison allows the transfer of knowledge about known proteins to a novel protein and plays an important role in function prediction. Obtaining a global perspective of the variety and distribution of protein structures also lays a foundation for our understanding of the building principle of protein structures. This dissertation introduces our computational method to compare protein 3D structures and presents a novel mapping of protein shapes that represents the variety and the similarities of 3D shapes of proteins and their assemblies. The methods developed in this work can be applied to obtain new biological insights into protein atomic structures and electron density maps.