>Agreed. It certainly raised some lively debate, which is always welcome.
>I don't think it is quite the breakthrough that the JHU magazine makes
>it out to be (by a long chalk - in fact I wonder if the authors assumed
>nobody outside JHU would actually see that magazine!) but still an >interesting contribution to the field in my opinion.
I wonder how widely circulated the JHU magazine article was prior to
the publication of the Proteins paper. Although the article is much
more optimistic than the paper about having solved the folding problem,
the JHU magazine is directed at least partially at people who make
donations to the university, and therefore it is in their best interest
to overstate the case, making JHU look good.
My opinion is that this method is potentially a major breakthru. If the
secondary structure predictions hold true for more complicated motifs
(eg. I'd really like to see a Greek-Key compared to the simple beta
sheet motif of IFABP), it is a great advance. However, even if it works
as well as advertised, I don't think it "solves" the problem of how
proteins fold. In my humble oversimplified opinion this is an
equilibrium determination of structure formation, and does not tell us
how proteins fold, but may give us the structure of the native endstate
without determining the path.
Ira Ropson
iropson at cor-mail.biochem.hmc.psu.edu
If I had time for a fancy Sig file I problably wouldn't have a job.
