Understanding protein functions in the biological context.

Abstract

Proteins are essential biomacromolecules in all living systems because they are the prominent ultimate executives of the genetic information stored in DNA. Thus, studying protein is one of the central tasks in biological sciences. The complexity, diversity, and dynamics of a protein's structure, function, and structure-function relationship, the inherent structural fragility and thus the requirements on handling proteins to maintain protein's structural and functional orderliness make it a rather tricky task to work with protein. The approach to understanding the functions of a protein has been progressing steadily. In this paper, we reviewed the progress on the approach to the functional study of proteins that tremendously contributed to understanding their biological significance. Emphasis was put on the advances in the age in which high-throughput DNA sequencing and bioinformatics analysis are revolutionizing biological study.