As one class of the most important materials supporting life phenomena, proteins have complicated and exquisite 3D structures which play a key role in the expression of its function. To gain a better understanding of the biological macromolecules, a key research project on protein structure measurement and preparation technology was launched recently at the CAS Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics (WIPM).
Entitled "High-resolution structure measurement and high-efficiency preparation technology of Protein", this project is part of a major S&T program on protein studies prescribed by the National Guideline on Medium- and Long-Term Program for Science and Technology Development (2006-2020).
With WIPM director-general Liu Maili as its chief scientist, the project is going to be a collaborative effort of outstanding scholars from WIPM, the CAS Institute of High Energy Physics, the CAS Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry and Fudan University, attracting National Outstanding Young Scientist awardees, Bairen-Program awardees as well as two CAS members on the expert board.
With a budget of 12.7 million yuan for its first two years, the five-year research will combine nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, synchrotron radiation-based X-ray crystallography and related technologies to develop new techniques and methods to detect the architecture of proteins, and come up with corresponding design and synthesis innovations.
According to Prof. Liu, a protein is basically a linear heteropolymer. On one hand, it remains unsolved as to how the chain-like molecules fold into a specific 3D structure, dubbed "the folding problem". On the other hand, the chemical evolution of protein, or the process through which complicated and exquisite 3D structures of protein as we see today have been constructed, constitutes an appealing issue. Since these studies are related not only to basic research, but to technological foundation for identifying proteins and creating new ones, they are drawing wide attentions from industrial sectors such as pharmacy and agriculture.
While both problems are far from total clarification, studies are in steady progress, Prof. Liu says. For the moment, the lack of effective protein structure measurement has become the bottleneck for the development of the entire protein science. And the structure measurement lags far behind genome studies. In 2005, scientists decoded about 1.5% of all discovered protein sequences, but the percentage had dropped by half to only 0.75% by June, 2008.
Chinese scientists successfully detected and synthesized the 3-D crystal structures of pig insulin in 1974. Their work on SARS-related proteins also won world acclaims.
