Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University College, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. grant@biochem.ucl.ac.uk
Although the precise aims differ between the various international structural genomics initiatives currently aiming to illuminate the universe of protein folds, many selectively target protein families for which the fold is unknown. How well can the current set of known protein families and folds be used to estimate the total number of folds in nature, and will structural genomics initiatives yield representatives for all the major protein families within a reasonable time scale?