Structural genomics—Impact on biomedicine and drug discovery

The field of structural genomics emerged as one of many 'omics disciplines more than a decade ago, and a multitude of large scale initiatives have been launched across the world. Development and implementation of methods for high-throughput structural biology represents a common denominator among different structural genomics programs. From another perspective a distinction between “biology-driven” versus “structure-driven” approaches can be made. This review outlines the general themes of structural genomics, its achievements and its impact on biomedicine and drug discovery. The growing number of high resolution structures of known and potential drug target proteins is expected to have tremendous value for future drug discovery programs. Moreover, the availability of large numbers of purified proteins enables generation of tool reagents, such as chemical probes and antibodies, to further explore protein function in the cell.