This book is an attempt to provide in a single source current state-of-the-art methodologies for protein sequence analysis. It is hoped that these various chapters are presented in such a way that both the newcomer and the established protein chemist will find useful information and directions to new techniques. This book offers a rich array of techniques and methods for sequencing proteins and peptides. It should meet the expectations of investigators in protein chemistry who wish to update their knowledge of sequencing techniques, and of those who wish to reacquaint themselves with the best available current technologies.

Sequence - Evolution - Function is an introduction to the computational approaches that play a critical role in the emerging new branch of biology known as functional genomics. The book provides the reader with an understanding of the principles and approaches of functional genomics and of the potential and limitations of computational and experimental approaches to genome analysis. Sequence - Evolution - Function should help bridge the "digital divide" between biologists and computer scientists, allowing biologists to better grasp the peculiarities of the emerging field of Genome Biology and to learn how to benefit from the enormous amount of sequence data available in the public databases. The book is non-technical with respect to the computer methods for genome analysis and discusses these methods from the user's viewpoint, without addressing mathematical and algorithmic details. Prior practical familiarity with the basic methods for sequence analysis is a major advantage, but a reader without such experience will be able to use the book as an introduction to these methods. This book is perfect for introductory level courses in computational methods for comparative and functional genomics.

Current Research in Protein Chemistry: Techniques, Structure, and Function reviews new techniques and methods for determining the structure and function of proteins. Topics covered include protein folding and stability, chimeric proteins, amino acid and peptide analysis, mass spectrometric methods, and protein sequencing techniques. This book is divided into six sections comprised of 55 chapters. The discussion begins with a description of microwave irradiation that uses Teflon-Pyrex tubes for protein hydrolysis, followed by the application of high performance capillary electrophoresis to the analysis of amino acids. The sections that follow explore mass spectrometry, protein sequencing, and capillary electrophoresis as well as protein stability, chimeric proteins and enzyme modifications, and protein structure prediction. Chapters focus on the crystal structure of human interleukin-1a, the acid-denatured states of proteins, solubility of recombinant proteins expressed in Escherichia coli, and catalysis by chimeric proteins. This book will be of value to students and researchers interested in protein chemistry.

Probabilistic models are becoming increasingly important in analysing the huge amount of data being produced by large-scale DNA-sequencing efforts such as the Human Genome Project. For example, hidden Markov models are used for analysing biological sequences, linguistic-grammar-based probabilistic models for identifying RNA secondary structure, and probabilistic evolutionary models for inferring phylogenies of sequences from different organisms. This book gives a unified, up-to-date and self-contained account, with a Bayesian slant, of such methods, and more generally to probabilistic methods of sequence analysis. Written by an interdisciplinary team of authors, it aims to be accessible to molecular biologists, computer scientists, and mathematicians with no formal knowledge of the other fields, and at the same time present the state-of-the-art in this new and highly important field.

"Methods in Protein Sequence Analysis - 1988" - contains selected contributions on modern protein- analytical techniques as presented by speakers at the Seventh International Conference on "Methods in Protein Sequence Analysis", held from July 3rd to July 8th, 1988 in Berlin. The book contains information on new methodologies for sensitive amino acid analysis, N- and C-terminal sequence analysis, and protein and peptide purification. In addition recent mass spectrometric approaches are described, as an alter native technique to the common stepwise degradative sequence analysis of polypeptides by the Edman method. The book presents new possibilities in the design of sequencers and sophisticated equipment for the structural analysis of peptides and proteins. It describes practical approaches for the investigation of protein domains and protein complexes, and contains review chapters on the crystallization of cell organelles as well as on recent theoretical aspects of protein folding mechanisms. The nature of protein folding is not yet understood, but further advances in this area would greatly enhance our present knowledge of protein structure and function. Further, the book gives examples of the application of gene technology to protein characterization and to the design of new proteins. This enables new studies on the structure and function of proteins to be made, and opens up efficient approaches to the design of drugs.

The Ninth International Conference on Methods in Protein Sequence Analysis was held for the first time in Asia from September 20 to September 24, 1992 in Otsu (a city near Kyoto), Japan. Approximately 400 delegates attended the meeting. Forty papers were presented orally and 147 poster presentations were discussed. Academic sessions were held from early in the morning until late in the evening. We are confident that the Conference was successful in providing up-to-date information about methods in protein sequence analysis to all participants. Moreover, with the knowledge and understanding of the present standard of various methods of analysis that are being used and will be used, we were able to clarify areas that need to be evaluated, to be improved and be explored further. Major topics in the Conference mostly covered areas in the methodology of protein sequence analysis, such as: micropreparation and microsequencing of proteins, mass spectrometry, post-translational modification, prediction and database analysis, and analysis of protein structures of special interests. The evolution of genetic engineering in molecular biology has greatly accelerated the accumulation of knowledge on the amino acid sequence of novel proteins regardless of whether they are expressed or not expressed in living organisms. In the early stage of accumulation of structural information, the amino acid sequence itself is worthy of notice.