Protein Primary Structure - Relation To Secondary and Tertiary Structure

Relation To Secondary and Tertiary Structure

The primary structure of a biological polymer to a large extent determines the three-dimensional shape known as the tertiary structure, but nucleic acid and protein folding are so complex that knowing the primary structure often doesn't help either to deduce the shape or to predict localized secondary structure, such as the formation of loops or helices. However, knowing the structure of a similar homologous sequence (for example a member of the same protein family) can unambiguously identify the tertiary structure of the given sequence. Sequence families are often determined by sequence clustering, and structural genomics projects aim to produce a set of representative structures to cover the sequence space of possible non-redundant sequences.

Read more about this topic:  Protein Primary Structure

Famous quotes containing the words relation to, relation, secondary, tertiary and/or structure:

    Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One’s relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain.
    Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)

    [Man’s] life consists in a relation with all things: stone, earth, trees, flowers, water, insects, fishes, birds, creatures, sun, rainbow, children, women, other men. But his greatest and final relation is with the sun.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    Cloud-clown, blue painter, sun as horn,
    Hill-scholar, man that never is,
    The bad-bespoken lacker,
    Ancestor of Narcissus, prince
    Of the secondary men. There are no rocks
    And stones, only this imager.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.
    Karl Kraus (1874–1936)

    It is difficult even to choose the adjective
    For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
    The great structure has become a minor house.
    No turban walks across the lessened floors.
    The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)