Proteins are polymers that are composed of a linear sequence of
amino acids.  Proteins spontaneously fold into complex three
dimensional structures that are responsible for performing the bulk
of the biochemical functions in living systems.  These biochemical
functions depend on complementarity of shape between interacting
partners. Consequently, much can be learned about a protein of
unknown function by identifying well characterized proteins that are
similar in shape, or homologous in structure, to the unknown
protein. This presentation will provide a brief introduction to
protein structure and then discuss the current status of
computational methods to detect structural homology between a large
number of proteins.