Patent ID: 7167819
Filing Date: 2007-01-23
Classification: G01N,G01R,G16B,Y10T

Abstract:
1. A method of determining the tertiary structure of a protein, comprising the steps of: imposing physical distance constraints between residues of the protein by cross-linking the protein; fragmenting the cross-linked protein into molecular fragments; subjecting the fragments to an identification procedure comprising a mass spectrometric analysis to identify sequences of the fragments; analyzing identification information obtained from the identification procedure to identify cross-link fragments in the protein; providing a set of candidate three-dimensional conformations for the protein's primary sequence; and applying physical distance constraint information associated with the cross-linking for the identified crosslink fragments to the candidate three-dimensional conformations to rank said three-dimensional conformations and selecting one or more of said three-dimensional confirmations based on the ranking, wherein the tertiary structure of the protein is thereby determined.