Reference: Hayes-Roth, B.; Buchanan, B.; Lichtarge, O.; Hewett, M.; Altman, R.; Brinkley, J.; Cornelius, C.; Duncan, B.; & Jardetzky, O. PROTEAN: Deriving protein structure from constraints. 1986.
Abstract: PROTEAN is an evolving knowledge-based system that is intended to identify the three dimensional conformations of proteins in solution. Using a variety of empirically derived constraints, PROTEAN must identify legal positions for each of a protein's constituent structures (e.g. atoms, amino acids, helices) in three-dimensional space. In fact, because protein-structure analysis is an underconstrained problem, PROTEAN must identify the entire family of conformations allowed by available constraints. In this paper, we discuss PROTEAN's approach to the protein-structure analysis problem and its current implementation within the BB1 blackboard architecture.