Structure-based drug design is frequently the drug-design approach favoured by Pharmaceutical companies – provided that relevant protein structures are available. For other cases where there is no structure, protein structure prediction is the required approach, but for many years this has been far from reliable. However, Alphafold 2 has recently changed the game, with stunning successes in the recent CASP protein structure competition<sup>&lt;span style="font-size:10.8333px"&gt;1-3&lt;/span&gt;</sup>. Many predicted AlphaFold structures are now available (alphafold.ebi.ac.uk / uniprot.org), but there are no ways to assess the validity of a given structure. Here we present work based on sequence alignment methods designed to work in the twilight zone that can be applied to assess the quality of an AlphaFold structure on a helix by helix and sheet by sheet approach, using appropriate templates identified by structural alignment.

Towards verifying AlphaFold structures

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.