15^th International Conference on Structural and Molecular Biology July 29-30, 2019 Sydney, Australia

The complete set of proteins in a cell can be referred to as its proteome and the study of protein structure and function in the cell is known as proteomics. The proteome is highly dynamic and it changes from time to time in response to different environmental stimuli. The goal of proteomics is to understand how the structure and function of proteins allow them to do what they do, what they interact with, and how they contribute to life processes.

Genomics is the new science that deals with the discovery and noting of all the sequences in the entire genome of a particular organism. The genome can be defined as the complete set of genes inside a cell. Genomics is, therefore, the study of the genetic make-up of organisms.

Molecular modeling is a scientific field of simulation of molecular systems. It represents the molecular structure numerically and simulating its behavior with the equations of quantum physics. Basically, it provides a tool to visualize 3D structure and to analyze the properties and behavior of the molecules on atomic level. It is widely used in drug designing to identify new lead compounds.

The arrangement of chemical bonds between atoms in a molecule specifically which atoms are chemically bonded to what other atoms with what kind of chemical bond, together with any information on the geometric shape of the molecule needed to uniquely identify the type of molecule. Also, various functions in the biological system depend on the structure of proteins. The dynamics of protein can be scrutinized mainly by determining the structure and function. Protein-protein interaction, protein interaction with other molecules, catalysis of enzymes and folding and misfolding that are associated with the diseases can be studied through structure determination. It is a procedure by which three dimensional atomic co coordinates are solved by analytical techniques. In crystallography, it refers to elaboration of three dimensional positional coordinates. The most common techniques used in structure determination are X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, electron microscopy and molecular modeling. Very often scientists use them to study the "native states" of biomolecules.

Computational Biology includes most of the aspects bioinformatics. It is the science of using biological data to develop algorithms or models to understand among various biological systems and relationships. There are approximately more than 3.3 million sequences without structure. This gap in the structural knowledge can be bridged by computation. Computational biology has become an important part of developing emerging technologies for the field of biology. Identification of suitable template of the related protein family plays a major role. The most common approaches in computational biology are ab-initio modeling, homology modeling and threading method. Among these approaches, genetic algorithm is found to be a promising co-operative computational method to solve the structure problem in reasonable time.

Structural bioinformatics is a highly cost-efficient solution for accelerated determination of the three-dimensional structures of proteins. Purely computational prediction methods, such as advanced fold recognition, composite approaches, ab initio fragment assembly, and molecular docking are routinely applied today. Hybrid method combines information from a varied set of experimental and computational sources. Hybrid approaches helps to overcome these limitations by incorporating limited experimental measurements, reliable structural models can be computed and unlikely predictions eliminated. Hybrid approaches take advantage of data derived from a range of very different biochemical and biophysical methods.

Sequencing is widely used to study how different organisms are related and how they are evolved. It is also used to study genomes and the proteins that they encode. With this sequencing information, changes in genes, disease association and drug targets are identified. It is widely used in medicinal field as a form of genetic testing. Vast amount of data is available as DNA sequencing is done on large scale. By August 2005, hundred billion bases were collected which represented 165,000 different organisms. As this data is numerous, need for new methods to analyze the sequences was critical. Thus Bioinformatics plays a major role in collecting, storing and analyzing these data with different tools.

Structural molecular biology illuminates the biochemical structures of all living systems at the atomic and molecular level. It also helps to understand the interaction between these components at a macroscopic level. This understanding helps in various fields like biotechnology, forensics and drug discovery.

Structural molecular biology comprehends the areas of science devoted to a detailed understanding of the fundamental molecular and biochemical components of living systems and of how these components interact in an organism.

Viruses are small self-replicating organisms. Even though individually viruses are simple, as a group they are exceptionally diverse in both replication strategies and structures. To study the life cycle of human virus, we use various technologies like X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy. We investigate macromolecular interactions associated with virus cell entry, genome replication, assembly, and maturation. Viruses are very simple enough that we can aspire to understand their biology at a molecular level. Our efforts are directed towards using structural information for the development of anti-viral drugs and vaccines.

Drug designing is an inventive process of finding new medication based on the target knowledge. A drug is commonly a small compound which produces a therapeutic effect. There are different methods of drug designing. Designing a drug based on the three-dimensional structure and computational techniques are known as structure-based drug design and computer aided drug design respectively. There are various stages involved in computer aided drug design such as hit identification, hit to lead optimization and lead optimization. In structure-based drug design, the structure is obtained either through x-ray crystallography or NMR spectroscopy. Ligand-based drug design depends on the knowledge of molecules that bind to the biological target of our interest. Correlation between calculated and theoretical can be derived and this QSAR relationship is used to derive analogs.

  Biomarkers include tools and technologies that aid in dynamic and powerful approach to understand the spectrum of neurological diseases in knowing the prediction, cause, diagnosis, progression, regression, or outcome of treatment of a disease.

The main purpose of structural biologist is to determine the structure of the protein and also drug designing such as identification of hits, leads and candidate drugs. Protein plays vital role in all biochemical reactions that occurs in the body. They act as carriers and also provides strength and structure. Determining structure of a protein has always been tedious. Innovative ideas are being progressed in different fields of structural biology.

The main aim of structural biology is to understand the biomolecules at the atomic level. There arise complexities in protein structure prediction, function prediction, misfolding and understanding the dynamics and interactions. As they are solved on large scale, a gap forms between the structure data and the sequence data. Bridging this gap is one of the important tasks. Some of the complex areas are signaling proteins, protein folding and intrinsically disordered proteins.

The major part of research is being carried out in the area of cancer. Cancer is defined as the abnormal growth of cells. There are numerous types of cancer that affects people of all age. Structural biology combines with molecular biology to design novel drugs mainly to cure cancer. The biologists carry out research in order to understand the biomolecules, identify different drug targets and improvise cancer therapies.

Cells consist of proteins called receptors which bind to signaling molecule. They in turn initiate a physiological response and also it governs the cellular activities and coordination. It controls gene expression which is vital for cells to function properly. Also, cell signaling network helps to understand how it responds to the environment.

Techniques in molecular biology includes Molecular analysis and Interpretation of Target gene which is undertaken by isolating nucleic acids , usage of enzymes, DNA ligases, Kinases, Phosphatases in molecular biological techniques, followed by Electrophoretic separation, Denaturation and hybridization of nuclear strands.  Application of blotting techniques in clinical and forensic science helps in detecting genetic abnormalities and viral infections. The development of PCR has increased the speed and accuracy of DNA analysis, and has resulted in the rapid development of new and creative techniques for detecting, replicating, and modifying DNA. 

Molecular biology methods have tremendous value not only in the investigation of basic scientific questions, but also in application to a wide variety of problems affecting the overall human condition. Disease prevention and diagnosis and treatment, generation of new protein products, rational drug design, DNA forensics and manipulation of plants and animals for desired phenotypic traits are all applications that are routinely addressed by the application of molecular biology methods.

Structural biology is the oldest of all biological disciplines and is still an expanding field. The main goal of structural biology is to achieve a complete understanding about the cellular structure in relation to the molecular mechanisms involved in the cellular processes. New insights are currently emerging into the macromolecular structures which involves in the signal transduction. It encompasses a full range of relationship from tissues to molecules. Structural biology has a very broad range and is highly diversified.

There have been several major advances in molecular biology in the past few years. New technologies either improve existing techniques or develop new approaches to old questions to generate information more quickly, easily, accurately or in a more easily repeatable fashion than existing method. Some of the most powerful new technologies include polymerase chain reaction (PCR) advances, “difference analysis” (that is, the discovery of different gene expression patterns between different cells), transgenic/gene knockout technology, and gene delivery to tissues/gene therapy.