But the new antibodies target an area of one protein that does not change.
The drug industry historically has developed new treatments by targeting one disease or one protein at a time.
Scientists have known for years that many genes make more than one protein by taking advantage of small DNA sequences within them called exons.
Judging from the winners' models, reliable extrapolations could be made from one protein to another so long as the two shared at least 30% of their amino-acid sequences.
Locating genes that code for more than one protein could allow Rosetta to find drug targets in tissues that were not considered drugable by finding previously unknown exons in known genes, Friend says.
Most did nothing, but one protein he tested in April 1998 had remarkable properties: It made a crucial class of immune cells called B-cells grow like crazy, while having little effect on other cells.
Drug companies testing drugs for cancer and other diseases have long gone after one bad protein at a time.
One such protein, the glutamate receptor, has been put under the control of a photoswitch and introduced into the retinas of mice.
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One such protein, IL-2, was once touted as a miracle drug but is so toxic it is not able to be used much.
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The long one produces more transporter-protein molecules than the short one.
The physical manifestations of the disease that Alois Alzheimer noticed in 1906 are sticky plaques of one type of protein, now known as beta-amyloid, and nerve-cell-engulfing tangles of a second type, called tau protein.
It works because many cases of muscular dystrophy are caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene (incidentally, one of the longest genes in the body) that make the entire genetic code for the protein shift by one letter.
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"Protein is one of the main ones that comes to mind, " she says.
This need for adjunct sugar molecules is one reason why making protein-based drugs is not as simple as it looks.
The idea is that an electron on one part of a protein may move, and arrive at another part lacking a quantum of vibrational energy.
Docs already routinely test for one inflammation-producing protein, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein.
The databases can--in a single day--test one disease-causing protein against a trillion chemical compounds and rank which ones are most likely to latch onto the protein and gum up its works.
Since knowing the structure of one member of a protein family lets researchers guess what others will look like, the most efficient strategy for choosing protein targets should cover as wide a diversity as possible.
It's not just for dudes who need to talk on their cellphones while walking down the street with a protein shake in one hand and a PowerBar in the other.
One reason could be that epidermal growth factor, the protein Iressa blocks, wasn't the right one to begin with.
The question is: is there just one folding pathway for a given protein, or are there several?
One possibility is that the tau protein causes the lesions in the brain.
Computers can recognise a well-folded protein when presented with one, but actually finding it calls for the sort of pattern recognition and lateral thinking that they struggle with.
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The researchers were able to form three types of mutants in the protein, in which one or both of the alpha helices were made more stable than they normally would have been.
Several more cases of using DNA sequencing, which reads out the 6 billion DNA letters that contain the protein recipes that make one person different from another, to understand the cause of disease have been published.
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About one-third test positive for a protein called HER2 that makes cancers particularly aggressive, but susceptible to the drug Herceptin.
When they published their first results, ten months ago, they had successfully added one unnatural amino acid to a bacterial protein.
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But 75% to 80% of people are born with at least one E-3 version of the protein, and more than half of people have two E-3's.
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One comes from a small company called Protein Sciences Corp.
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