Structural analysis of arabinose-5-phosphate isomerase from Bacteroides fragilis and functional implications

The crystal structure of arabinose-5-phosphate isomerase from B. fragilis NCTC 9343 in complex with an endogenous ligand, CMP-Kdo, is described. Structural and sequence comparisons suggest highly conserved functional residues in the active site that could be targeted for antibacterial drug design.

Improving the chances of successful protein structure determination with a random forest classifier

Using an extended set of protein features calculated separately for protein surface and interior, a new version of XtalPred based on a random forest classifier achieves a significant improvement in predicting the success of structure determination from the primary amino-acid sequence.