ROSETTA Software Suite
The Rosetta Software licensing program is an example of how the early distribution of source materials to academic users can accelerate scientific discovery and meet the Research Tool Guidelines established by the National Institutes of Health. In addition, licensing revenue from industry distribution is now supporting the lab's continuing work in proteomics.
Description
Rosetta is a suite of multiple software modules, including Rosetta ab initio, RosettaNMR, RosettaDesign, RosettaDock, Rosetta Fragment Selection, and Rosetta Nucleic Acids. These modules produce de novo structure predictions of unprecedented accuracy, incorporate NMR data for rapid structure determination at moderate to high resolution and speeds up the process of NMR structure prediction, identify low free energy sequences for target protein backbones, predict the structure of a protein-protein complex from the individual structures of the monomer components, generate fragment libraries for use by Rosetta ab initio in building protein structures, and provide design of proteins that interact with specified DNA sequences.
Technology Benefits
How does one predict how a protein folds or design new protein molecules for use in medicine or in industrial applications? These are the “big questions”
that researchers in computational molecular biology are seeking to answer. Rosetta
is a tool to help find the answer.
More than 60% of the protein sequences generated from the
genome sequencing project have no known structural homologs or function. Understanding the three-dimensional structure
of a protein is the key to determining its functionality. Protein
scientists are now in the position to provide computational tools to enable better understanding of protein structures and functions.
Development Background
Rosetta development began in the laboratory of Dr. David Baker, who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator
as well as a professor in the Department
of Biochemistry. These days Rosetta development is guided by the members of the Rosetta Commons, which is a collaborative research and software development environment of multiple universities and research institutes.
Rosetta Commons aims to develop high resolution protein prediction and design software and make this software broadly available to the scientific community without reach-through or other restrictive terms. The Rosetta Commons provides for an environment of continuous sharing and collaborative development in the context of the Rosetta platform.
Funding for the development of Rosetta has been provided by the Packard Foundation,
the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.
Future Goals
It is the goal of the Rosetta project team to achieve even greater accuracy
in the prediction of protein structure from DNA sequences, and also to
predict novel DNA sequences that may produce biological effects similar
to that of known proteins. The Rosetta team would like to design more
effective drugs, and gain a better understanding of biological diversity.
Digital Ventures' Role
Digital Ventures is distributing this research software to academics to accelerate
progress in the proteomics field; the software is also available for commercial
licensing under a non-exclusive licensing program. To make this possible, Digital
Ventures has aggregated rights to the intellectual property so that the software
codes could be distributed, and assisted the project in creating a cost recovery
budget.
Scientific Contact
David Baker
Department of Biochemistry
University of Washington
E-mail: dabaker@u.washington.edu
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