What is Structural Biology about?
In this article you will find a brief introduction to the field of structural biology, learn a crumb of history, and also understand current trends.
Bioinformatics has become a buzzword in modern news trends. During the observational sciences, people viewed biology and engineering (mathematics) as two completely different objects. One of them learned about living beings and their functions, while the other gave the foundation to computational programming and computer science. However, today, there is no longer a simple separation between applied computer science and real research issues. And specifically with biology, an interesting association called bioinformatics turned out.
What does structural biology have to do with it?
Structural biology includes the development and application of data analysis methods and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computer modeling methods for the study of biopolymer structures.
Biopolymers are a class of polymers found in nature in their native form, which are part of living organisms: proteins, nucleic acids, polysaccharides, lignin. Biopolymers consist of identical (or similar) links — monomers. Protein monomers are amino acids, nucleic acids are nucleotides, and polysaccharides are monosaccharides.
Effective methods and techniques are needed for the analysis and interpretation of biological data. It is their basis that constitutes the core of structural biology.
Classical structural biology was associated with various physical methods of studying substances. Various microscopy, complex algorithms and huge mathematical formulas are all about structural biology in the 20th century. However, online solutions to problems are also possible today. They should be disassembled.
What are the biggest challenges in this area at the moment?
Today, structural biology has moved from a descriptive science to a science that predicts the future. Today, the biggest tasks are predicting 3D structures of biopolymers, predicting their interactions and, of course, modeling new drugs literally in a computer.
1. Protein 3-D structures
If we talk about the volumetric structures of proteins and DNA, then the first thing that comes to mind is deep learning and the impossible results of machines in this matter. Indeed, in 2020, DeepMind made a breakthrough in the field of modeling protein structures, and this was a fundamental step towards solving the biggest challenges of our time.
In 2020, an algorithm based on deep machine learning called AlphaFold2 was presented at the competition for predicting the bulk structures of proteins based on their primary sequences. His results turned out to be head and shoulders above the results of competitors, so this caused a violent reaction from the media. I wrote more about this real revolution in another post, which you can find below.
2. Modelling
Modeling new drugs is still the dream of many clinical researchers. Unfortunately, at the moment there are no ready-made pipelines for creating de novo medicines for any diseases! This is what big concerns like Roche or Biontech are trying to make a reality. This is actually today’s story, which is heating up right before our eyes.
Conclusion
Thus, structural biology is a field of biology that deals with the study of the spatial functionality of various substances in biological beings. In this field, a confident knowledge of physics, statistics and applied mathematics will be useful. If you have an interest in what a possible project in this area might look like, you can rate my example below.
Finally
Human is a charming creature, and his genome is even more charming. The entire genome stored in a DNA molecule is amazing how such huge amounts of data can be encoded in one tiny object and accurately decoded to create unique people with their own unique characters. However, certain changes in gene expression can lead to fatal genetic diseases. Health ecosystems require measures to identify such diseases and provide curative and preventive measures that will help save human lives.
Bioinformatics and computational biology have proven to have a huge potential for detecting diseases, determining treatment methods and helping to improve people’s lives. Thanks to inspiration and knowledge in computer science, fields such as gene technology, medicine and healthcare can evolve from treating individual patients to treating entire populations around the world.
Be human, do science 🕊
