Biophysical Journal, Volume 80, p. 480-490 (2001)
A Self-Consistent Knowledge-Based Approach to Protein Design
Andrea Rossi, Cristian Micheletti, Flavio Seno, and Amos Maritan
Link to online article.
ABSTRACT A simple and very efficient protein design strategy is
proposed by developing some recently introduced theoretical tools
which have been successfully applied to exactly solvable protein
models. The design approach is imple-mented by using three amino acid
classes and it is based on the minimization of an appropriate energy
function. For a given native state the results of the design procedure
are compared, through a statistical analysis, with the properties of
an ensemble of sequences folding in the same conformation. If the
success rate is computed on those sites designed with high confidence,
it can be as high as 80%. The method is also able to identify key
sites for the folding process: results for 2ci2 and barnase are in
very good agreement with experimental results.