1. Impact of Structural Genomics (SG)
Compared to traditional structural biology laboratories
Number and types of structures solved
Efficiency of structural genomics centers
Scientific impact
Reprinted with permission from Figure 1 in Chandonia, J and Brenner, S. E. “The Impact of Structural Genomics: Expectations and Outcomes” Science 311: (2006)
Starting in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, a number of different countries initiated funding for structural genomics (SG) centers. In the United States, this effort was led by the National Institutes of Health’s Protein Structure Initiative (PSI), which began in At the time, members of the scientific community predicted that high-throughput methods and the targeting of template proteins would eventually allow the characterization of all major proteins. It has been more than five years since the PSI began, making it possible to chart the progress and impact of structural genomics as a whole. At the beginning of 2006, two researchers from the Berkeley Structural Genomics Center published a review comparing the productivity of structural genomics centers to traditional structural biology laboratories. The graphs in the slide show some of the major results of this study. Although only 20% of new protein structures at the end of 2005 were solved in structural genomics centers, approximately half of all novel structures entered into the Pfam database came from SG centers. These protein structures represent the first representatives of new protein families. Presumably, once these structures are solved, other members of the family can more easily be characterized with the assistance of computational methods. The Berkeley study also assessed the efficiency of different SG centers by determining the cost per characterized protein structure. In 2003, the estimated cost of solving a protein structure by traditional means was between $250,000 and $300,000. In 2004, the average cost at a PSI center was $138,000, with the most efficient center achieving an average cost of only $67,000. Despite these successes, SG centers significantly lag behind traditional structural biology laboratories in terms of papers published and the number of times those papers have been cited. The precise reasons for this are not entirely clear, and there is no reason to assume that the situation will not change with time.
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