title: A structural bioinformatics approach to the analysis of nonsynonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs) and their relation to disease.
abstract: The prediction of the effects of nonsynonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs) on function depends critically on exploiting all information available on the three-dimensional structures of proteins. We describe software and databases for the analysis of nsSNPs that allow a user to move from SNP to sequence to structure to function. In both structure prediction and the analysis of the effects of nsSNPs, we exploit information about protein evolution, in particular, that derived from investigations on the relation of sequence to structure gained from the study of amino acid substitutions in divergent evolution. The techniques developed in our laboratory have allowed fast and automated sequence-structure homology recognition to identify templates and to perform comparative modeling; as well as simple, robust, and generally applicable algorithms to assess the likely impact of amino acid substitutions on structure and interactions. We describe our strategy for approaching the relationship between SNPs and disease, and the results of benchmarking our approach -- human proteins of known structure and recognized mutation.
authors.affiliation: Biocomputing Group, Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. catherine@cryst.bioc.cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Catherine L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Worth
authors.forename: G Richard J
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Bickerton
authors.forename: Adrian
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schreyer
authors.forename: Julia R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Forman
authors.forename: Tammy M K
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Semin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Sungsam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.forename: David F
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Burke
authors.forename: Tom L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Blundell
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D004194:Disease; D006801:Humans; D008958:Models, Molecular; D009154:Mutation; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D025941:Protein Interaction Mapping; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins