SCHEMA is a computational
algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
used in
protein engineering to identify fragments of
proteins (called ''schemas'') that can be
recombined without disturbing the integrity of the proteins'
three-dimensional structure. The algorithm calculates the
interactions between a protein's different
amino acid
Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha a ...
residues to determine which interactions may be disrupted by swapping structural
domains of the protein. By minimizing these disruptions, SCHEMA can be used to engineer
chimeric proteins that stably
fold and may have altered function relative to their parent proteins. SCHEMA algorithm has been applied in the recombinant libraries of distantly related β-lactamases.
References
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Bioinformatics algorithms