The main research interest of the Section is to use various theoretical means to study the forces that govern the structure and interaction of globular protein molecules, to predict the three-dimensional structure of these molecules, and to engineer protein molecules with improved properties. Following were accomplished: (1) The molecular graphics modeling program, GEMM, has been improved; (2) The origin of the hydrophobic effect has been investigated and its magnitude has been estimated relative to the non-hydrophobic effect on the stability of globular proteins; (3) Two different approaches have been devised to predicting the three-dimensional structure of a globular protein from its amino acid sequence alone and the strength and the shortcomings of each approach have been evaluated.
