With the sequencing of the human genome and the genomes of dozens of other species, structural genomics efforts are now discovering thousands of new protein structures. The next question is: What do these structures actually do? Prof. Ondrechen's group is working on the development of methods to predict protein function from structure. Our THEMATICS method requires only the structure of the subject protein and thus works for proteins that bear no resemblance to previously characterized proteins.

Current THEMATICS projects deal with the analysis of specific enzymes of biological and medical importance, as well as application of an automated version of THEMATICS to computationally screen large numbers of protein structures.