Protein structural bioinformatics: An overview

Proteins perform several functions in living systems, which are dictated mainly by their three-dimensional structures. In this article, we highlight computational studies on the areas of protein structure-based investigations, including structural databases, structural analysis, development of structural parameters, protein three-dimensional structure prediction, protein folding kinetics, protein stability, stability changes upon mutations, binding sites and recognition mechanism of protein-protein, protein-nucleic acid and protein-carbohydrate complexes as well as drug design. The algorithms and the latest developments in these areas are presented, along with a list of online resources.