1
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Fiorentino J, Armaos A, Colantoni A, Tartaglia G. Prediction of protein-RNA interactions from single-cell transcriptomic data. Nucleic Acids Res 2024; 52:e31. [PMID: 38364867 PMCID: PMC11014251 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkae076] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/17/2023] [Revised: 01/12/2024] [Accepted: 01/26/2024] [Indexed: 02/18/2024] Open
Abstract
Proteins are crucial in regulating every aspect of RNA life, yet understanding their interactions with coding and noncoding RNAs remains limited. Experimental studies are typically restricted to a small number of cell lines and a limited set of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). Although computational methods based on physico-chemical principles can predict protein-RNA interactions accurately, they often lack the ability to consider cell-type-specific gene expression and the broader context of gene regulatory networks (GRNs). Here, we assess the performance of several GRN inference algorithms in predicting protein-RNA interactions from single-cell transcriptomic data, and propose a pipeline, called scRAPID (single-cell transcriptomic-based RnA Protein Interaction Detection), that integrates these methods with the catRAPID algorithm, which can identify direct physical interactions between RBPs and RNA molecules. Our approach demonstrates that RBP-RNA interactions can be predicted from single-cell transcriptomic data, with performances comparable or superior to those achieved for the well-established task of inferring transcription factor-target interactions. The incorporation of catRAPID significantly enhances the accuracy of identifying interactions, particularly with long noncoding RNAs, and enables the identification of hub RBPs and RNAs. Additionally, we show that interactions between RBPs can be detected based on their inferred RNA targets. The software is freely available at https://github.com/tartaglialabIIT/scRAPID.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jonathan Fiorentino
- Center for Life Nano- and Neuro-Science, RNA Systems Biology Lab, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), 00161 Rome, Italy
| | - Alexandros Armaos
- Centre for Human Technologies (CHT), RNA Systems Biology Lab, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), 16152 Genova, Italy
| | - Alessio Colantoni
- Center for Life Nano- and Neuro-Science, RNA Systems Biology Lab, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), 00161 Rome, Italy
- Department of Biology and Biotechnologies “Charles Darwin”, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
| | - Gian Gaetano Tartaglia
- Center for Life Nano- and Neuro-Science, RNA Systems Biology Lab, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), 00161 Rome, Italy
- Centre for Human Technologies (CHT), RNA Systems Biology Lab, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), 16152 Genova, Italy
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2
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Reveguk I, Simonson T. Classifying protein kinase conformations with machine learning. Protein Sci 2024; 33:e4918. [PMID: 38501429 PMCID: PMC10962494 DOI: 10.1002/pro.4918] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2023] [Revised: 01/02/2024] [Accepted: 01/22/2024] [Indexed: 03/20/2024]
Abstract
Protein kinases are key actors of signaling networks and important drug targets. They cycle between active and inactive conformations, distinguished by a few elements within the catalytic domain. One is the activation loop, whose conserved DFG motif can occupy DFG-in, DFG-out, and some rarer conformations. Annotation and classification of the structural kinome are important, as different conformations can be targeted by different inhibitors and activators. Valuable resources exist; however, large-scale applications will benefit from increased automation and interpretability of structural annotation. Interpretable machine learning models are described for this purpose, based on ensembles of decision trees. To train them, a set of catalytic domain sequences and structures was collected, somewhat larger and more diverse than existing resources. The structures were clustered based on the DFG conformation and manually annotated. They were then used as training input. Two main models were constructed, which distinguished active/inactive and in/out/other DFG conformations. They considered initially 1692 structural variables, spanning the whole catalytic domain, then identified ("learned") a small subset that sufficed for accurate classification. The first model correctly labeled all but 3 of 3289 structures as active or inactive, while the second assigned the correct DFG label to all but 17 of 8826 structures. The most potent classifying variables were all related to well-known structural elements in or near the activation loop and their ranking gives insights into the conformational preferences. The models were used to automatically annotate 3850 kinase structures predicted recently with the Alphafold2 tool, showing that Alphafold2 reproduced the active/inactive but not the DFG-in proportions seen in the Protein Data Bank. We expect the models will be useful for understanding and engineering kinases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ivan Reveguk
- Laboratoire de Biologie Structurale de la Cellule (CNRS UMR7654)Ecole PolytechniquePalaiseauFrance
| | - Thomas Simonson
- Laboratoire de Biologie Structurale de la Cellule (CNRS UMR7654)Ecole PolytechniquePalaiseauFrance
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3
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Wei J, Xiao J, Chen S, Zong L, Gao X, Li Y. ProNet DB: a proteome-wise database for protein surface property representations and RNA-binding profiles. Database (Oxford) 2024; 2024:baae012. [PMID: 38557634 PMCID: PMC10984565 DOI: 10.1093/database/baae012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/11/2023] [Revised: 01/08/2024] [Accepted: 02/17/2024] [Indexed: 04/04/2024]
Abstract
The rapid growth in the number of experimental and predicted protein structures and more complicated protein structures poses a significant challenge for computational biology in leveraging structural information and accurate representation of protein surface properties. Recently, AlphaFold2 released the comprehensive proteomes of various species, and protein surface property representation plays a crucial role in protein-molecule interaction predictions, including those involving proteins, nucleic acids and compounds. Here, we proposed the first extensive database, namely ProNet DB, that integrates multiple protein surface representations and RNA-binding landscape for 326 175 protein structures. This collection encompasses the 16 model organism proteomes from the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database and experimentally validated structures from the Protein Data Bank. For each protein, ProNet DB provides access to the original protein structures along with the detailed surface property representations encompassing hydrophobicity, charge distribution and hydrogen bonding potential as well as interactive features such as the interacting face and RNA-binding sites and preferences. To facilitate an intuitive interpretation of these properties and the RNA-binding landscape, ProNet DB incorporates visualization tools like Mol* and an Online 3D Viewer, allowing for the direct observation and analysis of these representations on protein surfaces. The availability of pre-computed features enables instantaneous access for users, significantly advancing computational biology research in areas such as molecular mechanism elucidation, geometry-based drug discovery and the development of novel therapeutic approaches. Database URL: https://proj.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/aihlab/pronet/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Junkang Wei
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Chung Chi Rd, Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong SAR 999077, China
| | - Jin Xiao
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Chung Chi Rd, Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong SAR 999077, China
| | - Siyuan Chen
- Computer Science Program, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- KAUST Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
| | - Licheng Zong
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Chung Chi Rd, Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong SAR 999077, China
| | - Xin Gao
- Computer Science Program, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- KAUST Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
| | - Yu Li
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Chung Chi Rd, Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong SAR 999077, China
- The CUHK Shenzhen Research Institute, 4 Gaoxin Ave Nanshan, Shenzhen 518057, China
- Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
- Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, 201 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA
- Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Merkin Building, 415 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
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4
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Harini K, Sekijima M, Gromiha MM. PRA-Pred: Structure-based prediction of protein-RNA binding affinity. Int J Biol Macromol 2024; 259:129490. [PMID: 38224813 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2024.129490] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/10/2023] [Revised: 01/10/2024] [Accepted: 01/12/2024] [Indexed: 01/17/2024]
Abstract
Understanding crucial factors that affect the binding affinity of protein-RNA complexes is vital for comprehending their recognition mechanisms. This study involved compiling experimentally measured binding affinity (ΔG) values of 217 protein-RNA complexes and extracting numerous structure-based features, considering RNA, protein, and interactions between protein and RNA. Our findings indicate the significance of RNA base-step parameters, interaction energies, number of atomic contacts in the complex, hydrogen bonds, and contact potentials in understanding the binding affinity. Further, we observed that these factors are influenced by the type of RNA strand and the function of the protein in a protein-RNA complex. Multiple regression equations were developed for different classes of complexes to perform the prediction of the binding affinity between the protein and RNA. We evaluated the models using the jack-knife test and achieved an overall correlation 0.77 between the experimental and predicted binding affinities with a mean absolute error of 1.02 kcal/mol. Furthermore, we introduced a web server, PRA-Pred, intended for the prediction of protein-RNA binding affinity, and it is freely accessible through https://web.iitm.ac.in/bioinfo2/prapred/. We propose that our approach could function as a potential resource for investigating protein-RNA recognitions and developing therapeutic strategies.
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Affiliation(s)
- K Harini
- Department of Biotechnology, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India
| | - M Sekijima
- Department of Computer Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan
| | - M Michael Gromiha
- Department of Biotechnology, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India; International Research Frontiers Initiative, School of Computing, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, 226-8501, Japan; Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
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5
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Wang H. Prediction of protein-ligand binding affinity via deep learning models. Brief Bioinform 2024; 25:bbae081. [PMID: 38446737 PMCID: PMC10939342 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbae081] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/27/2023] [Revised: 01/31/2024] [Indexed: 03/08/2024] Open
Abstract
Accurately predicting the binding affinity between proteins and ligands is crucial in drug screening and optimization, but it is still a challenge in computer-aided drug design. The recent success of AlphaFold2 in predicting protein structures has brought new hope for deep learning (DL) models to accurately predict protein-ligand binding affinity. However, the current DL models still face limitations due to the low-quality database, inaccurate input representation and inappropriate model architecture. In this work, we review the computational methods, specifically DL-based models, used to predict protein-ligand binding affinity. We start with a brief introduction to protein-ligand binding affinity and the traditional computational methods used to calculate them. We then introduce the basic principles of DL models for predicting protein-ligand binding affinity. Next, we review the commonly used databases, input representations and DL models in this field. Finally, we discuss the potential challenges and future work in accurately predicting protein-ligand binding affinity via DL models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Huiwen Wang
- School of Physics and Engineering, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang 471023, China
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6
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Kuhle B, Chen Q, Schimmel P. tRNA renovatio: Rebirth through fragmentation. Mol Cell 2023; 83:3953-3971. [PMID: 37802077 PMCID: PMC10841463 DOI: 10.1016/j.molcel.2023.09.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/23/2023] [Revised: 08/15/2023] [Accepted: 09/12/2023] [Indexed: 10/08/2023]
Abstract
tRNA function is based on unique structures that enable mRNA decoding using anticodon trinucleotides. These structures interact with specific aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases and ribosomes using 3D shape and sequence signatures. Beyond translation, tRNAs serve as versatile signaling molecules interacting with other RNAs and proteins. Through evolutionary processes, tRNA fragmentation emerges as not merely random degradation but an act of recreation, generating specific shorter molecules called tRNA-derived small RNAs (tsRNAs). These tsRNAs exploit their linear sequences and newly arranged 3D structures for unexpected biological functions, epitomizing the tRNA "renovatio" (from Latin, meaning renewal, renovation, and rebirth). Emerging methods to uncover full tRNA/tsRNA sequences and modifications, combined with techniques to study RNA structures and to integrate AI-powered predictions, will enable comprehensive investigations of tRNA fragmentation products and new interaction potentials in relation to their biological functions. We anticipate that these directions will herald a new era for understanding biological complexity and advancing pharmaceutical engineering.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bernhard Kuhle
- Department of Molecular Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA; Department of Cellular Biochemistry, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Qi Chen
- Molecular Medicine Program, Department of Human Genetics, and Division of Urology, Department of Surgery, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
| | - Paul Schimmel
- Department of Molecular Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA.
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7
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Troisi R, Balasco N, Autiero I, Vitagliano L, Sica F. Structural Insights into Protein-Aptamer Recognitions Emerged from Experimental and Computational Studies. Int J Mol Sci 2023; 24:16318. [PMID: 38003510 PMCID: PMC10671752 DOI: 10.3390/ijms242216318] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2023] [Revised: 11/10/2023] [Accepted: 11/12/2023] [Indexed: 11/26/2023] Open
Abstract
Aptamers are synthetic nucleic acids that are developed to target with high affinity and specificity chemical entities ranging from single ions to macromolecules and present a wide range of chemical and physical properties. Their ability to selectively bind proteins has made these compounds very attractive and versatile tools, in both basic and applied sciences, to such an extent that they are considered an appealing alternative to antibodies. Here, by exhaustively surveying the content of the Protein Data Bank (PDB), we review the structural aspects of the protein-aptamer recognition process. As a result of three decades of structural studies, we identified 144 PDB entries containing atomic-level information on protein-aptamer complexes. Interestingly, we found a remarkable increase in the number of determined structures in the last two years as a consequence of the effective application of the cryo-electron microscopy technique to these systems. In the present paper, particular attention is devoted to the articulated architectures that protein-aptamer complexes may exhibit. Moreover, the molecular mechanism of the binding process was analyzed by collecting all available information on the structural transitions that aptamers undergo, from their protein-unbound to the protein-bound state. The contribution of computational approaches in this area is also highlighted.
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Affiliation(s)
- Romualdo Troisi
- Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, 80126 Naples, Italy;
- Institute of Biostructures and Bioimaging, CNR, 80131 Naples, Italy;
| | - Nicole Balasco
- Institute of Molecular Biology and Pathology, CNR c/o Department of Chemistry, University of Rome Sapienza, 00185 Rome, Italy;
| | - Ida Autiero
- Institute of Biostructures and Bioimaging, CNR, 80131 Naples, Italy;
| | - Luigi Vitagliano
- Institute of Biostructures and Bioimaging, CNR, 80131 Naples, Italy;
| | - Filomena Sica
- Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, 80126 Naples, Italy;
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8
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Zhu H, Yang Y, Wang Y, Wang F, Huang Y, Chang Y, Wong KC, Li X. Dynamic characterization and interpretation for protein-RNA interactions across diverse cellular conditions using HDRNet. Nat Commun 2023; 14:6824. [PMID: 37884495 PMCID: PMC10603054 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42547-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2023] [Accepted: 10/13/2023] [Indexed: 10/28/2023] Open
Abstract
RNA-binding proteins play crucial roles in the regulation of gene expression, and understanding the interactions between RNAs and RBPs in distinct cellular conditions forms the basis for comprehending the underlying RNA function. However, current computational methods pose challenges to the cross-prediction of RNA-protein binding events across diverse cell lines and tissue contexts. Here, we develop HDRNet, an end-to-end deep learning-based framework to precisely predict dynamic RBP binding events under diverse cellular conditions. Our results demonstrate that HDRNet can accurately and efficiently identify binding sites, particularly for dynamic prediction, outperforming other state-of-the-art models on 261 linear RNA datasets from both eCLIP and CLIP-seq, supplemented with additional tissue data. Moreover, we conduct motif and interpretation analyses to provide fresh insights into the pathological mechanisms underlying RNA-RBP interactions from various perspectives. Our functional genomic analysis further explores the gene-human disease associations, uncovering previously uncharacterized observations for a broad range of genetic disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haoran Zhu
- School of Artificial Intelligence, Jilin University, 130012, Changchun, China
| | - Yuning Yang
- Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Yunhe Wang
- School of Artificial Intelligence, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, China
| | - Fuzhou Wang
- Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
| | - Yujian Huang
- College of Computer Science and Cyber Security, Chengdu University of Technology, 610059, Chengdu, China
| | - Yi Chang
- School of Artificial Intelligence, Jilin University, 130012, Changchun, China
| | - Ka-Chun Wong
- Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR.
| | - Xiangtao Li
- School of Artificial Intelligence, Jilin University, 130012, Changchun, China.
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9
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Vaculík O, Chalupová E, Grešová K, Majtner T, Alexiou P. Transfer Learning Allows Accurate RBP Target Site Prediction with Limited Sample Sizes. BIOLOGY 2023; 12:1276. [PMID: 37886986 PMCID: PMC10604046 DOI: 10.3390/biology12101276] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/15/2023] [Revised: 09/19/2023] [Accepted: 09/21/2023] [Indexed: 10/28/2023]
Abstract
RNA-binding proteins are vital regulators in numerous biological processes. Their disfunction can result in diverse diseases, such as cancer or neurodegenerative disorders, making the prediction of their binding sites of high importance. Deep learning (DL) has brought about a revolution in various biological domains, including the field of protein-RNA interactions. Nonetheless, several challenges persist, such as the limited availability of experimentally validated binding sites to train well-performing DL models for the majority of proteins. Here, we present a novel training approach based on transfer learning (TL) to address the issue of limited data. Employing a sophisticated and interpretable architecture, we compare the performance of our method trained using two distinct approaches: training from scratch (SCR) and utilizing TL. Additionally, we benchmark our results against the current state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, we tackle the challenges associated with selecting appropriate input features and determining optimal interval sizes. Our results show that TL enhances model performance, particularly in datasets with minimal training data, where satisfactory results can be achieved with just a few hundred RNA binding sites. Moreover, we demonstrate that integrating both sequence and evolutionary conservation information leads to superior performance. Additionally, we showcase how incorporating an attention layer into the model facilitates the interpretation of predictions within a biologically relevant context.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ondřej Vaculík
- Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC), Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
- Faculty of Science, National Centre for Biomolecular Research, Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
| | - Eliška Chalupová
- Faculty of Science, National Centre for Biomolecular Research, Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
| | - Katarína Grešová
- Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC), Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
- Faculty of Science, National Centre for Biomolecular Research, Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
| | - Tomáš Majtner
- Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC), Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
- Department of Molecular Sociology, Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, 60439 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Panagiotis Alexiou
- Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC), Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
- Department of Applied Biomedical Science, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Malta, MSD 2080 Msida, Malta
- Centre for Molecular Medicine & Biobanking, University of Malta, MSD 2080 Msida, Malta
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10
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Horlacher M, Cantini G, Hesse J, Schinke P, Goedert N, Londhe S, Moyon L, Marsico A. A systematic benchmark of machine learning methods for protein-RNA interaction prediction. Brief Bioinform 2023; 24:bbad307. [PMID: 37635383 PMCID: PMC10516373 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbad307] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2023] [Revised: 06/15/2023] [Accepted: 07/18/2023] [Indexed: 08/29/2023] Open
Abstract
RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are central actors of RNA post-transcriptional regulation. Experiments to profile-binding sites of RBPs in vivo are limited to transcripts expressed in the experimental cell type, creating the need for computational methods to infer missing binding information. While numerous machine-learning based methods have been developed for this task, their use of heterogeneous training and evaluation datasets across different sets of RBPs and CLIP-seq protocols makes a direct comparison of their performance difficult. Here, we compile a set of 37 machine learning (primarily deep learning) methods for in vivo RBP-RNA interaction prediction and systematically benchmark a subset of 11 representative methods across hundreds of CLIP-seq datasets and RBPs. Using homogenized sample pre-processing and two negative-class sample generation strategies, we evaluate methods in terms of predictive performance and assess the impact of neural network architectures and input modalities on model performance. We believe that this study will not only enable researchers to choose the optimal prediction method for their tasks at hand, but also aid method developers in developing novel, high-performing methods by introducing a standardized framework for their evaluation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marc Horlacher
- Computational Health Center, Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany
- School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University Munich (TUM), Germany
| | - Giulia Cantini
- Computational Health Center, Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany
| | - Julian Hesse
- Computational Health Center, Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany
| | - Patrick Schinke
- Computational Health Center, Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany
| | - Nicolas Goedert
- Computational Health Center, Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany
| | | | - Lambert Moyon
- Computational Health Center, Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany
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11
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Jiang Z, Shen YY, Liu R. Structure-based prediction of nucleic acid binding residues by merging deep learning- and template-based approaches. PLoS Comput Biol 2023; 19:e1011428. [PMID: 37672551 PMCID: PMC10482303 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011428] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/20/2023] [Accepted: 08/11/2023] [Indexed: 09/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Accurate prediction of nucleic binding residues is essential for the understanding of transcription and translation processes. Integration of feature- and template-based strategies could improve the prediction of these key residues in proteins. Nevertheless, traditional hybrid algorithms have been surpassed by recently developed deep learning-based methods, and the possibility of integrating deep learning- and template-based approaches to improve performance remains to be explored. To address these issues, we developed a novel structure-based integrative algorithm called NABind that can accurately predict DNA- and RNA-binding residues. A deep learning module was built based on the diversified sequence and structural descriptors and edge aggregated graph attention networks, while a template module was constructed by transforming the alignments between the query and its multiple templates into features for supervised learning. Furthermore, the stacking strategy was adopted to integrate the above two modules for improving prediction performance. Finally, a post-processing module dependent on the random walk algorithm was proposed to further correct the integrative predictions. Extensive evaluations indicated that our approach could not only achieve excellent performance on both native and predicted structures but also outperformed existing hybrid algorithms and recent deep learning methods. The NABind server is available at http://liulab.hzau.edu.cn/NABind/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zheng Jiang
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Agricultural Bioinformatics, College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China
| | - Yue-Yue Shen
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Agricultural Bioinformatics, College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China
| | - Rong Liu
- Hubei Key Laboratory of Agricultural Bioinformatics, College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China
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12
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Li X, Yang Q, Luo G, Xu L, Dong W, Wang W, Dong S, Wang K, Xuan P, Gao X. SAGDTI: self-attention and graph neural network with multiple information representations for the prediction of drug-target interactions. BIOINFORMATICS ADVANCES 2023; 3:vbad116. [PMID: 38282612 PMCID: PMC10818136 DOI: 10.1093/bioadv/vbad116] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/21/2023] [Revised: 07/31/2023] [Accepted: 08/24/2023] [Indexed: 01/30/2024]
Abstract
Motivation Accurate identification of target proteins that interact with drugs is a vital step in silico, which can significantly foster the development of drug repurposing and drug discovery. In recent years, numerous deep learning-based methods have been introduced to treat drug-target interaction (DTI) prediction as a classification task. The output of this task is binary identification suggesting the absence or presence of interactions. However, existing studies often (i) neglect the unique molecular attributes when embedding drugs and proteins, and (ii) determine the interaction of drug-target pairs without considering biological interaction information. Results In this study, we propose an end-to-end attention-derived method based on the self-attention mechanism and graph neural network, termed SAGDTI. The aim of this method is to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks in the identification of DTI. SAGDTI is the first method to sufficiently consider the unique molecular attribute representations for both drugs and targets in the input form of the SMILES sequences and three-dimensional structure graphs. In addition, our method aggregates the feature attributes of biological information between drugs and targets through multi-scale topologies and diverse connections. Experimental results illustrate that SAGDTI outperforms existing prediction models, which benefit from the unique molecular attributes embedded by atom-level attention and biological interaction information representation aggregated by node-level attention. Moreover, a case study on severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) shows that our model is a powerful tool for identifying DTIs in real life. Availability and implementation The data and codes underlying this article are available in Github at https://github.com/lixiaokun2020/SAGDTI.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaokun Li
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, China
- Postdoctoral Program of Heilongjiang Hengxun Technology Co., Ltd., Harbin 150090, China
| | - Qiang Yang
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, China
- Postdoctoral Program of Heilongjiang Hengxun Technology Co., Ltd., Harbin 150090, China
| | - Gongning Luo
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
| | - Long Xu
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, China
- Postdoctoral Program of Heilongjiang Hengxun Technology Co., Ltd., Harbin 150090, China
| | - Weihe Dong
- Postdoctoral Program of Heilongjiang Hengxun Technology Co., Ltd., Harbin 150090, China
- College of Computer and Control Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin 150040, China
| | - Wei Wang
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
| | - Suyu Dong
- College of Computer and Control Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin 150040, China
| | - Kuanquan Wang
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
| | - Ping Xuan
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, China
- Department of Computer Science, School of Engineering, Shantou University, Shantou 515063, China
| | - Xin Gao
- Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences & Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, 4700 KAUST, Thuwal 23955, Saudi Arabia
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13
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Wu KE, Zou JY, Chang H. Machine learning modeling of RNA structures: methods, challenges and future perspectives. Brief Bioinform 2023; 24:bbad210. [PMID: 37280185 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbad210] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/13/2023] [Revised: 05/12/2023] [Accepted: 05/17/2023] [Indexed: 06/08/2023] Open
Abstract
The three-dimensional structure of RNA molecules plays a critical role in a wide range of cellular processes encompassing functions from riboswitches to epigenetic regulation. These RNA structures are incredibly dynamic and can indeed be described aptly as an ensemble of structures that shifts in distribution depending on different cellular conditions. Thus, the computational prediction of RNA structure poses a unique challenge, even as computational protein folding has seen great advances. In this review, we focus on a variety of machine learning-based methods that have been developed to predict RNA molecules' secondary structure, as well as more complex tertiary structures. We survey commonly used modeling strategies, and how many are inspired by or incorporate thermodynamic principles. We discuss the shortcomings that various design decisions entail and propose future directions that could build off these methods to yield more robust, accurate RNA structure predictions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kevin E Wu
- Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Center for Personal Dynamic Regulomes, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
| | - James Y Zou
- Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
| | - Howard Chang
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
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14
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Sato K, Hamada M. Recent trends in RNA informatics: a review of machine learning and deep learning for RNA secondary structure prediction and RNA drug discovery. Brief Bioinform 2023; 24:bbad186. [PMID: 37232359 PMCID: PMC10359090 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbad186] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/16/2023] [Revised: 04/24/2023] [Accepted: 04/25/2023] [Indexed: 05/27/2023] Open
Abstract
Computational analysis of RNA sequences constitutes a crucial step in the field of RNA biology. As in other domains of the life sciences, the incorporation of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques into RNA sequence analysis has gained significant traction in recent years. Historically, thermodynamics-based methods were widely employed for the prediction of RNA secondary structures; however, machine learning-based approaches have demonstrated remarkable advancements in recent years, enabling more accurate predictions. Consequently, the precision of sequence analysis pertaining to RNA secondary structures, such as RNA-protein interactions, has also been enhanced, making a substantial contribution to the field of RNA biology. Additionally, artificial intelligence and machine learning are also introducing technical innovations in the analysis of RNA-small molecule interactions for RNA-targeted drug discovery and in the design of RNA aptamers, where RNA serves as its own ligand. This review will highlight recent trends in the prediction of RNA secondary structure, RNA aptamers and RNA drug discovery using machine learning, deep learning and related technologies, and will also discuss potential future avenues in the field of RNA informatics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kengo Sato
- School of System Design and Technology, Tokyo Denki University, 5 Senju Asahi-cho, Adachi-ku, Tokyo 120-8551, Japan
| | - Michiaki Hamada
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Bioscience, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 55N-06-10, 3-4-1, Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
- Computational Bio Big-Data Open Innovation Laboratory (CBBD-OIL) , National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 3-4-1, Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
- Graduate School of Medicine, Nippon Medical School, 1-1-5, Sendagi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8602, Japan
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15
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Miller LG, Demny M, Tamamis P, Contreras LM. Characterization of epitranscriptome reader proteins experimentally and in silico: Current knowledge and future perspectives beyond the YTH domain. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2023; 21:3541-3556. [PMID: 37501707 PMCID: PMC10371769 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2023.06.018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/20/2023] [Revised: 06/23/2023] [Accepted: 06/27/2023] [Indexed: 07/29/2023] Open
Abstract
To date, over 150 chemical modifications to the four canonical RNA bases have been discovered, known collectively as the epitranscriptome. Many of these modifications have been implicated in a variety of cellular processes and disease states. Additional work has been done to identify proteins known as "readers" that selectively interact with RNAs that contain specific chemical modifications. Protein interactomes with N6-methyladenosine (m6A), N1-methyladenosine (m1A), N5-methylcytosine (m5C), and 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanosine (8-oxoG) have been determined, mainly through experimental advances in proteomics techniques. However, relatively few proteins have been confirmed to bind directly to RNA containing these modifications. Furthermore, for many of these protein readers, the exact binding mechanisms as well as the exclusivity for recognition of modified RNA species remain elusive, leading to questions regarding their roles within different cellular processes. In the case of the YT-521B homology (YTH) family of proteins, both experimental and in silico techniques have been leveraged to provide valuable biophysical insights into the mechanisms of m6A recognition at atomic resolution. To date, the YTH family is one of the best characterized classes of readers. Here, we review current knowledge about epitranscriptome recognition of the YTH domain proteins from previously published experimental and computational studies. We additionally outline knowledge gaps for proteins beyond the well-studied human YTH domains and the current in silico techniques and resources that can enable investigation of protein interactions with modified RNA outside of the YTH-m6A context.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucas G. Miller
- McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
| | - Madeline Demny
- Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
| | - Phanourios Tamamis
- Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
- Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
| | - Lydia M. Contreras
- McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
- Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
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16
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Szpotkowski K, Wójcik K, Kurzyńska-Kokorniak A. Structural studies of protein-nucleic acid complexes: A brief overview of the selected techniques. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2023; 21:2858-2872. [PMID: 37216015 PMCID: PMC10195699 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2023.04.028] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/30/2022] [Revised: 04/28/2023] [Accepted: 04/28/2023] [Indexed: 05/24/2023] Open
Abstract
Protein-nucleic acid complexes are involved in all vital processes, including replication, transcription, translation, regulation of gene expression and cell metabolism. Knowledge of the biological functions and molecular mechanisms beyond the activity of the macromolecular complexes can be determined from their tertiary structures. Undoubtably, performing structural studies of protein-nucleic acid complexes is challenging, mainly because these types of complexes are often unstable. In addition, their individual components may display extremely different surface charges, causing the complexes to precipitate at higher concentrations used in many structural studies. Due to the variety of protein-nucleic acid complexes and their different biophysical properties, no simple and universal guideline exists that helps scientists chose a method to successfully determine the structure of a specific protein-nucleic acid complex. In this review, we provide a summary of the following experimental methods, which can be applied to study the structures of protein-nucleic acid complexes: X-ray and neutron crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), small angle scattering (SAS) methods, circular dichroism (CD) and infrared (IR) spectroscopy. Each method is discussed regarding its historical context, advancements over the past decades and recent years, and weaknesses and strengths. When a single method does not provide satisfactory data on the selected protein-nucleic acid complex, a combination of several methods should be considered as a hybrid approach; thus, specific structural problems can be solved when studying protein-nucleic acid complexes.
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17
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Dong W, Yang Q, Wang J, Xu L, Li X, Luo G, Gao X. Multi-modality attribute learning-based method for drug-protein interaction prediction based on deep neural network. Brief Bioinform 2023; 24:7145903. [PMID: 37114624 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbad161] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2022] [Revised: 03/19/2023] [Accepted: 04/02/2023] [Indexed: 04/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Identification of active candidate compounds for target proteins, also called drug-protein interaction (DPI) prediction, is an essential but time-consuming and expensive step, which leads to fostering the development of drug discovery. In recent years, deep network-based learning methods were frequently proposed in DPIs due to their powerful capability of feature representation. However, the performance of existing DPI methods is still limited by insufficiently labeled pharmacological data and neglected intermolecular information. Therefore, overcoming these difficulties to perfect the performance of DPIs is an urgent challenge for researchers. In this article, we designed an innovative 'multi-modality attributes' learning-based framework for DPIs with molecular transformer and graph convolutional networks, termed, multi-modality attributes (MMA)-DPI. Specifically, intermolecular sub-structural information and chemical semantic representations were extracted through an augmented transformer module from biomedical data. A tri-layer graph convolutional neural network module was applied to associate the neighbor topology information and learn the condensed dimensional features by aggregating a heterogeneous network that contains multiple biological representations of drugs, proteins, diseases and side effects. Then, the learned representations were taken as the input of a fully connected neural network module to further integrate them in molecular and topological space. Finally, the attribute representations were fused with adaptive learning weights to calculate the interaction score for the DPIs tasks. MMA-DPI was evaluated in different experimental conditions and the results demonstrate that the proposed method achieved higher performance than existing state-of-the-art frameworks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Weihe Dong
- College of information and Computer Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Hexing Road, 150040, Harbin, China
| | - Qiang Yang
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Heilongjiang University, Xuefu Road, 150080, Harbin, China
- Postdoctoral Program of Heilongjiang Hengxun Technology Co., Ltd., Xuefu Road, 150080, Harbin, China
| | - Jian Wang
- College of information and Computer Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Hexing Road, 150040, Harbin, China
| | - Long Xu
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Heilongjiang University, Xuefu Road, 150080, Harbin, China
- Postdoctoral Program of Heilongjiang Hengxun Technology Co., Ltd., Xuefu Road, 150080, Harbin, China
| | - Xiaokun Li
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Heilongjiang University, Xuefu Road, 150080, Harbin, China
- Postdoctoral Program of Heilongjiang Hengxun Technology Co., Ltd., Xuefu Road, 150080, Harbin, China
| | - Gongning Luo
- Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences & Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, 4700 KAUST, Thuwal 23955, Saudi Arabia
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, West Dazhi Street, 150001, Harbin, China
| | - Xin Gao
- Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences & Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, 4700 KAUST, Thuwal 23955, Saudi Arabia
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18
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Zhao R, Fang X, Mai Z, Chen X, Mo J, Lin Y, Xiao R, Bao X, Weng X, Zhou X. Transcriptome-wide identification of single-stranded RNA binding proteins. Chem Sci 2023; 14:4038-4047. [PMID: 37063799 PMCID: PMC10094363 DOI: 10.1039/d3sc00957b] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/20/2023] [Accepted: 03/07/2023] [Indexed: 04/18/2023] Open
Abstract
RNA-protein interactions are precisely regulated by RNA secondary structures in various biological processes. Large-scale identification of proteins that interact with particular RNA structure is important to the RBPome. Herein, a kethoxal assisted single-stranded RNA interactome capture (KASRIC) strategy was developed to globally identify single-stranded RNA binding proteins (ssRBPs). This approach combines RNA secondary structure probing technology with the conventional method of RNA-binding proteins profiling, realizing the transcriptome-wide identification of ssRBPs. Applying KASRIC, we identified 3180 candidate RBPs and 244 candidate ssRBPs in HeLa cells. Importantly, the 244 candidate ssRBPs contained 55 previously reported ssRBPs and 189 novel ssRBPs. Function analysis of the candidate ssRBPs exhibited enrichment in cellular processes related to RNA splicing and RNA degradation. The KASRIC strategy will facilitate the investigation of RNA-protein interactions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ruiqi Zhao
- College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Polymers-Ministry of Education, Wuhan University Wuhan Hubei 430072 P. R. China
| | - Xin Fang
- College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Polymers-Ministry of Education, Wuhan University Wuhan Hubei 430072 P. R. China
| | - Zhibiao Mai
- Laboratory of RNA Molecular Biology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, CAS Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology, GIBH-CUHK Joint Research Laboratory on Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Guangdong Province 510530 China
| | - Xi Chen
- College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Polymers-Ministry of Education, Wuhan University Wuhan Hubei 430072 P. R. China
| | - Jing Mo
- College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Polymers-Ministry of Education, Wuhan University Wuhan Hubei 430072 P. R. China
| | - Yingying Lin
- Laboratory of RNA Molecular Biology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, CAS Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology, GIBH-CUHK Joint Research Laboratory on Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Guangdong Province 510530 China
| | - Rui Xiao
- Frontier Science Center for Immunology and Metabolism, Medical Research Institute, Wuhan University Wuhan Hubei 430071 China
- TaiKang Center for Life and Medical Sciences, Wuhan University Wuhan Hubei 430071 China
| | - Xichen Bao
- Laboratory of RNA Molecular Biology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, CAS Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology, GIBH-CUHK Joint Research Laboratory on Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Guangdong Province 510530 China
| | - Xiaocheng Weng
- College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Polymers-Ministry of Education, Wuhan University Wuhan Hubei 430072 P. R. China
| | - Xiang Zhou
- College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Polymers-Ministry of Education, Wuhan University Wuhan Hubei 430072 P. R. China
- TaiKang Center for Life and Medical Sciences, Wuhan University Wuhan Hubei 430071 China
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19
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Li Z, Gao E, Zhou J, Han W, Xu X, Gao X. Applications of deep learning in understanding gene regulation. CELL REPORTS METHODS 2023; 3:100384. [PMID: 36814848 PMCID: PMC9939384 DOI: 10.1016/j.crmeth.2022.100384] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/22/2023]
Abstract
Gene regulation is a central topic in cell biology. Advances in omics technologies and the accumulation of omics data have provided better opportunities for gene regulation studies than ever before. For this reason deep learning, as a data-driven predictive modeling approach, has been successfully applied to this field during the past decade. In this article, we aim to give a brief yet comprehensive overview of representative deep-learning methods for gene regulation. Specifically, we discuss and compare the design principles and datasets used by each method, creating a reference for researchers who wish to replicate or improve existing methods. We also discuss the common problems of existing approaches and prospectively introduce the emerging deep-learning paradigms that will potentially alleviate them. We hope that this article will provide a rich and up-to-date resource and shed light on future research directions in this area.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhongxiao Li
- Computer Science Program, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- KAUST Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
| | - Elva Gao
- The KAUST School, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
| | - Juexiao Zhou
- Computer Science Program, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- KAUST Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
| | - Wenkai Han
- Computer Science Program, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- KAUST Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
| | - Xiaopeng Xu
- Computer Science Program, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- KAUST Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
| | - Xin Gao
- Computer Science Program, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- KAUST Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
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20
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Roca-Martínez J, Dhondge H, Sattler M, Vranken WF. Deciphering the RRM-RNA recognition code: A computational analysis. PLoS Comput Biol 2023; 19:e1010859. [PMID: 36689472 PMCID: PMC9894542 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010859] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/12/2022] [Revised: 02/02/2023] [Accepted: 01/07/2023] [Indexed: 01/24/2023] Open
Abstract
RNA recognition motifs (RRM) are the most prevalent class of RNA binding domains in eucaryotes. Their RNA binding preferences have been investigated for almost two decades, and even though some RRM domains are now very well described, their RNA recognition code has remained elusive. An increasing number of experimental structures of RRM-RNA complexes has become available in recent years. Here, we perform an in-depth computational analysis to derive an RNA recognition code for canonical RRMs. We present and validate a computational scoring method to estimate the binding between an RRM and a single stranded RNA, based on structural data from a carefully curated multiple sequence alignment, which can predict RRM binding RNA sequence motifs based on the RRM protein sequence. Given the importance and prevalence of RRMs in humans and other species, this tool could help design RNA binding motifs with uses in medical or synthetic biology applications, leading towards the de novo design of RRMs with specific RNA recognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joel Roca-Martínez
- Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels, VUB/ULB, Brussels, Belgium
- Structural biology Brussels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
| | | | - Michael Sattler
- Institute of Structural Biology, Molecular Targets and Therapeutics Center, Helmholtz Munich, Neuherberg, Germany
- Bavarian NMR Center, Department of Bioscience, School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany
| | - Wim F. Vranken
- Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels, VUB/ULB, Brussels, Belgium
- Structural biology Brussels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
- * E-mail:
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21
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Marklund E, Ke Y, Greenleaf WJ. High-throughput biochemistry in RNA sequence space: predicting structure and function. Nat Rev Genet 2023; 24:401-414. [PMID: 36635406 DOI: 10.1038/s41576-022-00567-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 12/08/2022] [Indexed: 01/14/2023]
Abstract
RNAs are central to fundamental biological processes in all known organisms. The set of possible intramolecular interactions of RNA nucleotides defines the range of alternative structural conformations of a specific RNA that can coexist, and these structures enable functional catalytic properties of RNAs and/or their productive intermolecular interactions with other RNAs or proteins. However, the immense combinatorial space of potential RNA sequences has precluded predictive mapping between RNA sequence and molecular structure and function. Recent advances in high-throughput approaches in vitro have enabled quantitative thermodynamic and kinetic measurements of RNA-RNA and RNA-protein interactions, across hundreds of thousands of sequence variations. In this Review, we explore these techniques, how they can be used to understand RNA function and how they might form the foundations of an accurate model to predict the structure and function of an RNA directly from its nucleotide sequence. The experimental techniques and modelling frameworks discussed here are also highly relevant for the sampling of sequence-structure-function space of DNAs and proteins.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emil Marklund
- Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - Yuxi Ke
- Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - William J Greenleaf
- Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA.
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22
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23
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Martinez De La Cruz B, Darsinou M, Riccio A. From form to function: m 6A methylation links mRNA structure to metabolism. Adv Biol Regul 2023; 87:100926. [PMID: 36513580 PMCID: PMC10585597 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbior.2022.100926] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/23/2022] [Revised: 10/17/2022] [Accepted: 11/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
Reversible N6-methyladenosine (m6A) RNA modification is a posttranscriptional epigenetic modification of the RNA that regulates many key aspects of RNA metabolism and function. In this review, we highlight major recent advances in the field, with special emphasis on the potential link between m6A modifications and RNA structure. We will also discuss the role of RNA methylation of neuronal transcripts, and the emerging evidence of a potential role in RNA transport and local translation in dendrites and axons of transcripts involved in synaptic functions and axon growth.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Marousa Darsinou
- UCL Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology - University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, London, UK
| | - Antonella Riccio
- UCL Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology - University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, London, UK.
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24
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Wang JY, Pausch P, Doudna JA. Structural biology of CRISPR-Cas immunity and genome editing enzymes. Nat Rev Microbiol 2022; 20:641-656. [PMID: 35562427 DOI: 10.1038/s41579-022-00739-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 58] [Impact Index Per Article: 29.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 04/11/2022] [Indexed: 12/20/2022]
Abstract
CRISPR-Cas systems provide resistance against foreign mobile genetic elements and have a wide range of genome editing and biotechnological applications. In this Review, we examine recent advances in understanding the molecular structures and mechanisms of enzymes comprising bacterial RNA-guided CRISPR-Cas immune systems and deployed for wide-ranging genome editing applications. We explore the adaptive and interference aspects of CRISPR-Cas function as well as open questions about the molecular mechanisms responsible for genome targeting. These structural insights reflect close evolutionary links between CRISPR-Cas systems and mobile genetic elements, including the origins and evolution of CRISPR-Cas systems from DNA transposons, retrotransposons and toxin-antitoxin modules. We discuss how the evolution and structural diversity of CRISPR-Cas systems explain their functional complexity and utility as genome editing tools.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joy Y Wang
- Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
- Innovative Genomics Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Patrick Pausch
- VU LSC-EMBL Partnership for Genome Editing Technologies, Life Sciences Center, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania.
| | - Jennifer A Doudna
- Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
- Innovative Genomics Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
- Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
- California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
- MBIB Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
- Gladstone Institutes, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
- Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology, San Francisco, CA, USA.
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25
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Yuan Y, Yan H, Cui Z, Liu Z, Su W, Zhang R. Quantum Chemical Calculations with Machine Learning for Multipolar Electrostatics Prediction in RNA: An Application to Pentose. J Chem Inf Model 2022; 62:4122-4133. [PMID: 36036609 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.2c00747] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
To develop a realistic electrostatic model that allows for the anisotropy of the atomic electron density, high-rank atomic multipole moments computed by quantum chemical calculations have been studied extensively. However, it is hard to process huge RNA systems only relying on quantum chemical calculations due to its highly computational cost. In this study, we employ five machine learning methods of Gaussian process regression with automatic relevance determination (ARDGPR), Kriging, radial basis function neural networks, Bagging, and generalized regression neural network to predict atomic multipole moments. Atom-atom electrostatic interaction energies are subsequently computed using the predicted atomic multipole moments in the pilot system pentose of RNA. Here, the performance of the five methods is compared in terms of both the multipole moment prediction errors and the electrostatic energy prediction errors. For the predicted high-rank multipole moments of the four elements (O, C, N, and H) in capped pentose, ARDGPR and Kriging consistently outperform the other three methods. Therefore, the multipole moments predicted by the two best methods of ARDGPR and Kriging are then used to predict electrostatic interaction energy of each pentose. Finally, the absolute average energy errors of ARDGPR and Kriging are 1.83 and 4.33 kJ mol-1, respectively. Compared to Kriging, the ARDGPR method achieves a 58% decrease in the absolute average energy error. These satisfactory results demonstrated that the ARDGPR method with the strong feature extraction ability can predict the electrostatic interaction energy of pentose in RNA correctly and reliably.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yongna Yuan
- School of Information Science & Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China, 730000
| | - Haoqiu Yan
- School of Information Science & Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China, 730000
| | - Zeyang Cui
- School of Information Science & Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China, 730000
| | - Zhenyu Liu
- School of Cyberspace Security, Gansu University of Political Science and Law, Lanzhou, China, 730070
| | - Wei Su
- School of Information Science & Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China, 730000
| | - Ruisheng Zhang
- School of Information Science & Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China, 730000
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Ma W, Zhang S, Li Z, Jiang M, Wang S, Lu W, Bi X, Jiang H, Zhang H, Wei Z. Enhancing Protein Function Prediction Performance by Utilizing AlphaFold-Predicted Protein Structures. J Chem Inf Model 2022; 62:4008-4017. [PMID: 36006049 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.2c00885] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
The structure of a protein is of great importance in determining its functionality, and this characteristic can be leveraged to train data-driven prediction models. However, the limited number of available protein structures severely limits the performance of these models. AlphaFold2 and its open-source data set of predicted protein structures have provided a promising solution to this problem, and these predicted structures are expected to benefit the model performance by increasing the number of training samples. In this work, we constructed a new data set that acted as a benchmark and implemented a state-of-the-art structure-based approach for determining whether the performance of the function prediction model can be improved by putting additional AlphaFold-predicted structures into the training set and further compared the performance differences between two models separately trained with real structures only and AlphaFold-predicted structures only. Experimental results indicated that structure-based protein function prediction models could benefit from virtual training data consisting of AlphaFold-predicted structures. First, model performances were improved in all three categories of Gene Ontology terms (GO terms) after adding predicted structures as training samples. Second, the model trained only on AlphaFold-predicted virtual samples achieved comparable performances to the model based on experimentally solved real structures, suggesting that predicted structures were almost equally effective in predicting protein functionality.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wenjian Ma
- College of Computer Science and Technology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China
| | - Shugang Zhang
- College of Computer Science and Technology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China.,High Performance Computing Center, Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Qingdao 266237, China
| | - Zhen Li
- College of Computer Science and Technology, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
| | - Mingjian Jiang
- School of Information and Control Engineering, Qingdao University of Technology, Qingdao 266033, China
| | - Shuang Wang
- College of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao 266580, China
| | - Weigang Lu
- College of Computer Science and Technology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China
| | - Xiangpeng Bi
- College of Computer Science and Technology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China
| | - Huasen Jiang
- College of Computer Science and Technology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China
| | - Henggui Zhang
- College of Computer Science and Technology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China.,High Performance Computing Center, Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Qingdao 266237, China.,Biological Physics Group, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, U.K
| | - Zhiqiang Wei
- College of Computer Science and Technology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China.,High Performance Computing Center, Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Qingdao 266237, China
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Shin SH, Oh SM, Yoon Park JH, Lee KW, Yang H. OptNCMiner: a deep learning approach for the discovery of natural compounds modulating disease-specific multi-targets. BMC Bioinformatics 2022; 23:218. [PMID: 35672685 PMCID: PMC9175487 DOI: 10.1186/s12859-022-04752-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/19/2022] [Accepted: 05/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Background Due to their diverse bioactivity, natural product (NP)s have been developed as commercial products in the pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic sectors as natural compound (NC)s and in the form of extracts. Following administration, NCs typically interact with multiple target proteins to elicit their effects. Various machine learning models have been developed to predict multi-target modulating NCs with desired physiological effects. However, due to deficiencies with existing chemical-protein interaction datasets, which are mostly single-labeled and limited, the existing models struggle to predict new chemical-protein interactions. New techniques are needed to overcome these limitations. Results We propose a novel NC discovery model called OptNCMiner that offers various advantages. The model is trained via end-to-end learning with a feature extraction step implemented, and it predicts multi-target modulating NCs through multi-label learning. In addition, it offers a few-shot learning approach to predict NC-protein interactions using a small training dataset. OptNCMiner achieved better prediction performance in terms of recall than conventional classification models. It was tested for the prediction of NC-protein interactions using small datasets and for a use case scenario to identify multi-target modulating NCs for type 2 diabetes mellitus complications. Conclusions OptNCMiner identifies NCs that modulate multiple target proteins, which facilitates the discovery and the understanding of biological activity of novel NCs with desirable health benefits.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12859-022-04752-5.
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Affiliation(s)
- Seo Hyun Shin
- Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea
| | - Seung Man Oh
- Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea
| | - Jung Han Yoon Park
- Bio-MAX Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea
| | - Ki Won Lee
- Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea. .,Bio-MAX Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea. .,Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea.
| | - Hee Yang
- Bio-MAX Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea.
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28
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Arora V, Sanguinetti G. Challenges for machine learning in RNA-protein interaction prediction. Stat Appl Genet Mol Biol 2022; 21:sagmb-2021-0087. [PMID: 35073469 DOI: 10.1515/sagmb-2021-0087] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/10/2021] [Accepted: 01/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
RNA-protein interactions have long being recognised as crucial regulators of gene expression. Recently, the development of scalable experimental techniques to measure these interactions has revolutionised the field, leading to the production of large-scale datasets which offer both opportunities and challenges for machine learning techniques. In this brief note, we will discuss some of the major stumbling blocks towards the use of machine learning in computational RNA biology, focusing specifically on the problem of predicting RNA-protein interactions from next-generation sequencing data.
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Affiliation(s)
- Viplove Arora
- Data Science, Department of Physics, International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste 34136, Italy
| | - Guido Sanguinetti
- Data Science, Department of Physics, International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste 34136, Italy
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