Automated Family-Wide Annotation of Secondary Structure Elements

Abstract

Secondary structure elements (SSEs) are inherent parts of protein structures, and their arrangement is characteristic for each protein family. Therefore, annotation of SSEs can facilitate orientation in the vast number of homologous structures which is now available for many protein families. It also provides a way to identify and annotate the key regions, like active sites and channels, and subsequently answer the key research questions, such as understanding of molecular function and its variability. This chapter introduces the concept of SSE annotation and describes the workflow for obtaining SSE annotation for the members of a selected protein family using program SecStrAnnotator.