Representation of amino acid sequences in terms of interaction energy in protein globules

We suggest a new simple approach for comparing the primary structure of proteins and their spatial structure, It relies on the one-to-one correspondence between each residue of the polypeptide chain and the energy of van der Waals interactions between the regions of the native globule flanking this residue, The method obviates the sophisticated geometrical criteria for estimating similarity between spatial structures, Besides, it permits one to analyze structural units of different scale. (C) 1997 Federation of European Biochemical Societies.