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meeting review A brighter future for protein structure prediction Patrice Koehl and Michael Levitt The most recent critical assessment of structure prediction meeting (CASP3) revealed significant progress in predicting the three-dimensional folds of proteins with unknown structures. In recent alternating years, protein struc- ed at Asilomar and papers by the three tein on the basis of close sequence similar- ture predictors have met in Asilomar, assessors and the 18 groups chosen to ity to a template protein of known struc- California, where their predictions and speak are published in a special issue of ture. At least one group built a high methods have been assessed. The most Proteins: Structure, Function Genetics. quality model (Ca r.m.s. deviation 2 A recent critical assessment of structure The first meeting (CASPl, see ref. 1) took for a substantial fraction of the structure) prediction (CASP) meeting* was held place in 1994, assessing 135 predictions for every target for which a homolog with this past December, and the results pre- made by 35 groups for 33 different protein a known structure could be detected by sented at this conference reveal clear targets. The second meeting (CASP2, see sequence comparison methods like progress in the areas of accurate align- ref. 2), held in 1996, was marked by a dra- FASTA or PSI-BLAST. This was even true ments, sensitive fold recognition, reason- matic increase in the interest of the com- for cases with sequenc