title: Bioinformatic Analysis of Toll-Like Receptor Sequences and Structures.
abstract: Continual advancements in computing power and sophistication, coupled with rapid increases in protein sequence and structural information, have made bioinformatic tools an invaluable resource for the molecular and structural biologist. With the degree of sequence information continuing to expand at an almost exponential rate, it is essential that scientists today have a basic understanding of how to utilise, manipulate and analyse this information for the benefit of their own experiments. In the context of Toll-Interleukin I Receptor domain containing proteins, we describe here a series of the more common and user-friendly bioinformatic tools available as Internet-based resources. These will enable the identification and alignment of protein sequences; the identification of functional motifs; the characterisation of protein secondary structure; the identification of protein structural folds and distantly homologous proteins; and the validation of the structural geometry of modelled protein structures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.|Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Research, Elsie Widdowson Laboratory, Fulbourn Road, Cambridge, CB1 9NL, UK.
authors.forename: Tom P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Monie
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Nicholas J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Gay
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. mg308@mole.bio.cam.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Monique
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gangloff
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D006801:Humans; D008958:Models, Molecular; D011487:Protein Conformation; D054730:Protein Interaction Domains and Motifs; D011499:Protein Processing, Post-Translational; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship; D051193:Toll-Like Receptors / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D051193:Toll-Like Receptors
keywords: Bioinformatics; FUGUE; Homology; Sequence alignment; Sequence comparison; Structure validation; TLR; Toll-Interleukin-1 Receptor Domain (TIR); Toll-like receptor