16^th International Conference on Structural Biology December 09-10, 2019 Dubai, UAE

Proteomics includes studies of composition, structure, function, and interaction of the proteins directing the activities of each living cell. It is the branch of molecular biology concerned with the study of proteome.

Genomics is the sub-discipline of genetics devoted to mapping, sequencing and functional analysis of genomics. It studies all the genes present in an organism. It includes the study of intragenomic phenomena such as heterosis, epistasis, pleiotropy and other interactions between loci and alleles within the genomes.

Biochemistry is the branch of science in which deals with the study the chemical and physical processes that occurs in an organism. It integrates an introduction to the structure of macromolecules and a biochemical approach to cellular function.  It includes the study of things as the structures and physical properties of biological molecules, including proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids; the mechanisms of enzyme action; the chemical regulation of metabolism; the chemistry of nutrition; the molecular basis of genetics; the chemistry of vitamins; energy utilization in the cell; and the chemistry of the immune response.

Biophysics involves the study of biological systems and biological processes using physics-based methods or based on physical principles. It is an interdisciplinary research area between physics and biology. Biological phenomena and Living nature can be explored using the principles and methods applied in physics.

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that develops method and software tools for understanding biological data. It combines various fields including computer science, statistics, mathematics, and engineering to analyze and interpret biological data. It is a hybrid science that links biological data with techniques for information storage, distribution, and analysis to support multiple areas of scientific research, including biomedicine. It is fed by high-throughput data-generating experiments, including genomic sequence determinations and measurements of gene expression patterns.

Molecular Biology is the field of biology that studies the composition, structure, and interactions of cellular molecules like nucleic acids and proteins which carry out the biological processes essential for the cell's functions and maintenance. It covers a wide scope of problems that are related to molecular and cell biology including structural and functional genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, biomedicine, molecular enzymology, molecular virology, and molecular immunology, etc.

Microbiology involves the study of the micro-organisms that are too small to be seen by naked eyes. It includes eukaryotes such as fungi and protists and prokaryotes such as bacteria and certain algae. 

Enzymology involves the study of enzymes, their kinetics, structure, and function, as well as their relation to each other. Enzymes play an important role in all metabolic and cellular signaling pathways. Scientists are often interested in understanding how enzymes function at the molecular and atomic level through a combination of modern biochemistry and structural biology. Techniques used to investigate enzyme structure and dynamics include X-ray crystallography, NMR, mass spectroscopy and protein chemistry, while their chemical behavior is being characterized by rapid-reaction and steady-state kinetics, calorimetry, chemical analyses, and a variety of spectroscopies. Protein engineering is also used to study how structure determines function.

Synthetic Biology is an interdisciplinary branch, combining the principles of biology and engineering in order to produce biological functions in organisms that may or may not otherwise occur naturally. It is an emerging field that aims at designing and building novel biological systems.

Viruses use a molecular mechanism to penetrate the host cells to confirm an infection and to assure that the progeny virus particles are discharged into the environment invading the host’s immune defenses. This phenomenon is known as Structural Virology. Although viruses are simple as the individual with the self-replicating ability but as a group, they are exceptionally diverse in strategies and structures.

3-D structures determination of proteins is crucial for the understanding of these interactions as well as their structure-function relationships, which also has many practical applications in drug design and protein engineering. Determining the 3D structure of protein help us to understand the mechanism of action of protein and its functions.

Computational approaches are benefits for structural biology. Structure of molecules is determined by experimental methods which are tedious and practical. Computational biology is an interdisciplinary field that develops and applies computational methods to analyze large collections of biological data, such as genetic sequences, cell populations or protein samples, to make new predictions or discover new biology. The computational methods used include analytical methods, mathematical modeling, and simulation. It is a rapidly developing multi-disciplinary field. The systematic achievements of data made possible by genomics & proteomics technologies have created a tremendous gap between available data & their biological interpretation.

Molecular modeling is a computer-based technique for determining and representing the three-dimensional structures of the molecules, also the properties associated with these 3-D structures. The main applications of molecular modeling are the generation of protein structures, molecular structure visualization, and determination of molecular properties.

Molecular dynamics simulation is a technique to study the structure and functional relationship of macromolecules. It mimics the real-life motion of atoms and molecules.

Structural bioinformatics is a special practical result for protein structure determination. Structural Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the three-dimensional structures of biomolecules. It attempts to model and discover the basic principles underlying biological machinery at the molecular level. It is based on the hypothesis that 3D structural information of a biological system is the basic to understanding its mechanism of action and function. Structural bioinformatics combines applications of physical and chemical principles with algorithms from computational science. Major areas protein and nucleic acid 3D structure determination, prediction of protein 3D structure from sequence, protein structure validation protein structure comparison and alignment, protein and nucleic acid structure classification inferring protein function from structure, prediction of protein-ligand interaction, prediction of protein-protein interactions, development of databases.

Structural biologist aims to determine the structure of the protein and along with drug designing such as the identification of hits, leads, and candidate drugs. Protein plays an essential role in all biochemical reactions that occur in the body. They act as carriers and providing strength and structure. Discovering the structure of a protein has always been tedious and complex. Innovative ideas are being improved in different fields of structural biology.

The main part of research is being carried out in the area of cancer. The principal aim is to design and discover innovative and efficient drugs to cure the disease. Structural biology combined with molecular modeling principally aims at drug designing. Ultimately, many researchers in Structural biology carry out cancer research to increase the exploitation of molecular understanding of biomolecules in the advancement of innovative cancer therapies. Cancer immunotherapy is also used which is defined as the response of the immune system to reject cancer. Immunotherapies can be a beneficial way of treating cancer. The malignant tumor cells are attacked by stimulating the immune system as these cells are capable to exploit the fact that cancer cells often have molecules on their surface that can be detected by the tumor-associated antigens (TAAs).

A biological macromolecule's function is known by the chemical and physical properties of its three‐dimensional (3D) structure. Concerning this, one should know the structure of a biomolecule which is very important if we want to know the living systems and diseases. A database is a structured combination of data. In the field of structural biology immense research is being done and as the result, huge data is being produced. To store the data in an organized manner, bioinformatics databases are used. Many databases are designed so that the biological data can be stored such as sequence databases, signaling database,  structure database, etc. The Protein database(PDB) which is a crystallographic database is used for 3D structural data of larger biomolecules. The advancement in technologies had been considered in the further development of the PDB and in the structural specialty and structural characteristic databases that have also evolved. The mainly used databases are Electron Microscopy Data Bank, Protein Structure Classification Database (CATH), Structural Classification of Protein (SCOP) and Protein Data Bank (PDB).

Structural biology is one of the developing fields. In the course of time, many modifications have taken place. A large number of resolved structures have increased rapidly. The drug design and drug discovery field have been advanced. Another field where progressions are being seen is functional annotations. Modifications, in order to improve the effectiveness of prevailing tools, can also be remarked. Extraordinary advances can be seen in the areas of imaging technologies and the advancement of hybrid methods to explain the structure and function of proteins. Structural biology is one of the progressing fields. In the course of time, many developments have been taking place.

 Drug design is an inventive process to find new medication centered on the knowledge of the biological target. It is also known as also known as rational drug design. A drug is most a small molecule that inhibits or activates the function of a biomolecule, which in results into a therapeutic benefit to the patient. Drug design commonly relies on computational techniques. This type of modeling is often mentioned to as computer-aided drug design. Drug design that depends on the knowledge of the 3D structure of the target is known as structure-based drug design. The main methods available for drug design are structure-based drug design and ligand-based drug design. The structure-based drug designing also known as direct drug design involves the three-dimensional structure of a drug target interacting with small molecules is used to guide drug discovery. 

Biomarkers are biological measures of a biological state. It is a characteristic that is accurately measured and evaluated as an indicator of natural biological processes, pathogenic processes or pharmacological responses to a therapeutic intervention.