Strategic thinking
Biochemists are vying to solve protein structures. They should collaborate
SOLVING the human genome was a doddle. Although it is 3 billion units long, its shape has no bearing on its function. The harder part is to analyse the structure of the proteins that those genes (and the genes of all other creatures) encode. For this, shape matters; and to find the shape of a protein, it has to be purified and either X-rayed to destruction or run through a nuclear-magnetic resonance (NMR) machine. Or you can compare it with a protein whose structure you already know.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Strategic thinking”
From the June 9th 2001 edition
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