Structural proteomics: lessons learnt from the early case studies.

The genomics efforts have identified a large number of novel genes and thus provided a pool of interesting but not functionally characterized target proteins. It has been suggested that structural proteomics will significantly impact the success rate of functional characterization of such identified genes and proteins by providing structure-function hypotheses by fold and feature recognition and analysis. Structural proteomics initiatives, both in academic and industrial settings, are today generating protein structures at an unprecedented rate although relatively few large-scale efforts have been displayed in the public domain. However, a number of individual studies have provided a 'road-map' for selected approaches that hold the promise to significantly impact the process of deriving function from structure.