Abstract
The archaeal, bacterial, andeukaryotic genome projects have overwhelmed our ability to experimentally elucidate the function of each novel gene and gene product. To a certain extent, protein functional assignments can be derived via sequence similarity measures and direct primary sequence analysis using methods to predict hydropathy, secondary structure, amphilicity, and antigenicity. Function can also be inferred on the basis of sequence motifs, such as phosphorylation and lipid binding signatures. These methods, provided in DNASTAR's PROTEAN module, can be used to putatively assign roles for novel proteins from the genome explosion as well as clarify function for better known proteins.