About the image
The figure shows the prediction of Cesari et al. (Nature Struct. Biol. 2(2):171-178, 1995) using a principle component analysis approach. Dr. Jacobs was, as far as he is aware, the first author to publish a method to predict the functional residues of a protein family with divergent substrates from a multiple sequence alignment (Jacobs G.H., EMBO J. 11(12):4507-4517, 1992) and Jacobs, G.H. PhD thesis, Cambridge, 1992). Note the incorrect prediction of the residues to either end of the molecule (the widely-studied SH2 domain) using Cesari's method. The figure was prepared using the Macintosh version of Rasmol (v3.5), a free product for studying molecular structures.

Dr. Jacobs has continued to follow developments in the area of prediction of functional residues and will release software which he believes is fundamentally superior to that currently available in this important niche area.

Dr. Jacobs believes that such methods will play an important role in the move of genomics to functional information. Combined with structural models these predictions can provide important leads to drug development.