We collaborate in the development of sgTarget, an informatics resource capable of performing target selection through the implementation of a number of sequence analysis protocols. The system enables structural biologists to select targets from their genomic sequences of interest, according to their research needs.

Structural genomics aims to provide a 3D description for every protein encoded by all completed genomes. Regrettably, not all protein structures are accessible to current experimental methodologies, and many do not lend themselves to high-throughput studies. In addition, although the number of protein structures has increased exponentially, not all structures provide further coverage of the protein universe, with many representing slight variants of already known structures. It is therefore important to identify the genes for which a protein structure will provide the highest new information content and where possible quantify measures of how tractable each protein system is for structure determination.

sgTarget facilitates the selection and prioritization of candidate proteins for structure determination. It enables structural biologists to iteratively select targets from their genomic sequences of interest and according to their research needs. sgTarget annotates user submitted gene or protein sequences, identifying sequence families with no homologues of known structure, and characterizing each protein according to a range of physicochemical properties that may affect its expression, solubility and likelihood to crystallize.

An online version is made available here < http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/sgTarget/ >



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Tags: software, sequence_analysis, genome_analysis