A method for predicting an amino acid sequence compatible with a
three-dimensional (3D) structure of a protein. A reduced virtual
representation of the 3D structure is constructed, and, for each position
along the representation, its solvent accessibility is determined. For
each position along the structure, an amino acid residue is randomly
selected from a predefined group of amino acids having a solvent
accessibility compatible with the solvent accessibility of the position.
A Monte-Carlo simulation is performed on this devised protein in which an
amino acid at a particular position is sequentially replaced with other
amino acids having the same solvent accessibility, and an energy score is
calculated for each rotamer. The lowest scoring rotamer for this position
is then selected The Monte-Carlo simulation is repeated for each position
along the sequence, to obtain an amino acid sequence with the lowest
total energy score.