Crystallography is unable to solve a large percentage of protein structures anytime soon.
Structural genomics is an initiative to solve a large percentage by homology modeling. There are 9 NIH-funded structural genomics centers/consortia in the USA, plus commercial efforts and centers in other countries, for a total of >20 (>70 institutions).
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By one estimate (Vitkup et al., 2001), obtaining templates for 90% of proteins would require solving 16,000 new sequence-unrelated structures. This is several times the world output of crystallography to date. About 12% of this goal has been attained by Structural Genomics Projects. Some more recent estimates (Chandonia & Brenner, 2006) would lower these percentages.
by
Eric Martz, University of Massachusetts, July 2003 (updated February 2004,
June 2006, April 2007).
Websites:
Publications, most recent first:
Further reading:
Summaries and excerpts of selected articled are at
My Favorite Structural Genomics Literature.
The debate over how to allocate limited funds for
the second five years "PSI2" of the US NIH structural genomics initiative.
"These new structures have revealed many unexpected
functional and evolution relationships that were hidden at the
sequence level."
The authors make the point that overall
progress is much larger than the number of solved structures, since each
solution serves as a template for homology modeling a large family of
sequences. Also, work is often stopped on a target when a sequence-related
target is solved; hence not all uncompleted targets are "failures".