text: One current goal of the Joint Center for Structural Genomics (JCSG), a part of the Protein Structure Initiative (PSI) is to solve the structures for all the proteins in Thermotoga maritima, a thermophillic bacterium. T. maritima was selected as a structural genomics target based on its relatively small genome consisting of 1,877 genes and the hypothesis that the proteins expressed by a thermophilic bacterium would be easier to crystallize.
  Lesley et al used Escherichia coli to express all the open-reading frames (ORFs) of T. martima. These proteins were then crystallized and structures were determined for successfully crystallized proteins using X-ray crystallography.  Among other structures, this structural genomics approach allowed for the determination of the structure of the TM0449 protein, which was found to exhibit a novel fold as it did not share structural homology with any known protein.