BackgroundThe rate of protein structures being deposited in the Protein Data Bank surpasses the capacity to experimentally characterise them and therefore computational methods to analyse these structures have become increasingly important. Identifying the region of the protein most likely to be involved in function is useful in order to gain information about its potential role. There are many available approaches to predict functional site, but many are not made available via a publicly-accessible application.ResultsHere we present a functional site prediction tool (SitesIdentify), based on combining sequence conservation information with geometry-based cleft identification, that is freely available via a web-server. We have shown that SitesIdentify compares favourably to other functional site prediction tools in a comparison of seven methods on a non-redundant set of 237 enzymes with annotated active sites.ConclusionSitesIdentify is able to produce comparable accuracy in predicting functional sites to its closest available counterpart, but in addition achieves improved accuracy for proteins with few characterised homologues. SitesIdentify is available via a webserver at http://www.manchester.ac.uk/bioinformatics/sitesidentify/

The maleation of conventional and metallocene linear low density polyethylenes by reactive extrusion has been explored with a view to defining the conditions necessary for a robust process that provides both high grafting efficiencies (>80%) and minimal degradation or cross‐linking. The dependence of grafting efficiency on various operating parameters (maleic anhydride level, maleic anhydride:initiator ratio, throughput rate, direction of screw rotation, temperature) has been established. Literature methods for characterization of the grafted product based on FTIR or 1H NMR analysis have been critically examined with respect to their ability to distinguish between single unit and oligomeric maleic anhydride grafts and found to yield ambiguous results.

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