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Jia P, Zhang F, Wu C, Li M. A comprehensive review of protein-centric predictors for biomolecular interactions: from proteins to nucleic acids and beyond. Brief Bioinform 2024; 25:bbae162. [PMID: 38739759 PMCID: PMC11089422 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbae162] [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: 01/01/2024] [Revised: 02/17/2024] [Accepted: 03/31/2024] [Indexed: 05/16/2024] Open
Abstract
Proteins interact with diverse ligands to perform a large number of biological functions, such as gene expression and signal transduction. Accurate identification of these protein-ligand interactions is crucial to the understanding of molecular mechanisms and the development of new drugs. However, traditional biological experiments are time-consuming and expensive. With the development of high-throughput technologies, an increasing amount of protein data is available. In the past decades, many computational methods have been developed to predict protein-ligand interactions. Here, we review a comprehensive set of over 160 protein-ligand interaction predictors, which cover protein-protein, protein-nucleic acid, protein-peptide and protein-other ligands (nucleotide, heme, ion) interactions. We have carried out a comprehensive analysis of the above four types of predictors from several significant perspectives, including their inputs, feature profiles, models, availability, etc. The current methods primarily rely on protein sequences, especially utilizing evolutionary information. The significant improvement in predictions is attributed to deep learning methods. Additionally, sequence-based pretrained models and structure-based approaches are emerging as new trends.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pengzhen Jia
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, 932 Lushan Road(S), Changsha 410083, China
| | - Fuhao Zhang
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, 932 Lushan Road(S), Changsha 410083, China
- College of Information Engineering, Northwest A&F University, No. 3 Taicheng Road, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China
| | - Chaojin Wu
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, 932 Lushan Road(S), Changsha 410083, China
| | - Min Li
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, 932 Lushan Road(S), Changsha 410083, China
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2
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Zhang J, Basu S, Kurgan L. HybridDBRpred: improved sequence-based prediction of DNA-binding amino acids using annotations from structured complexes and disordered proteins. Nucleic Acids Res 2024; 52:e10. [PMID: 38048333 PMCID: PMC10810184 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkad1131] [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: 03/29/2023] [Accepted: 11/10/2023] [Indexed: 12/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Current predictors of DNA-binding residues (DBRs) from protein sequences belong to two distinct groups, those trained on binding annotations extracted from structured protein-DNA complexes (structure-trained) vs. intrinsically disordered proteins (disorder-trained). We complete the first empirical analysis of predictive performance across the structure- and disorder-annotated proteins for a representative collection of ten predictors. Majority of the structure-trained tools perform well on the structure-annotated proteins while doing relatively poorly on the disorder-annotated proteins, and vice versa. Several methods make accurate predictions for the structure-annotated proteins or the disorder-annotated proteins, but none performs highly accurately for both annotation types. Moreover, most predictors make excessive cross-predictions for the disorder-annotated proteins, where residues that interact with non-DNA ligand types are predicted as DBRs. Motivated by these results, we design, validate and deploy an innovative meta-model, hybridDBRpred, that uses deep transformer network to combine predictions generated by three best current predictors. HybridDBRpred provides accurate predictions and low levels of cross-predictions across the two annotation types, and is statistically more accurate than each of the ten tools and baseline meta-predictors that rely on averaging and logistic regression. We deploy hybridDBRpred as a convenient web server at http://biomine.cs.vcu.edu/servers/hybridDBRpred/ and provide the corresponding source code at https://github.com/jianzhang-xynu/hybridDBRpred.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jian Zhang
- School of Computer and Information Technology, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang 464000, PR China
| | - Sushmita Basu
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284, USA
| | - Lukasz Kurgan
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284, USA
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3
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Zhang F, Li M, Zhang J, Kurgan L. HybridRNAbind: prediction of RNA interacting residues across structure-annotated and disorder-annotated proteins. Nucleic Acids Res 2023; 51:e25. [PMID: 36629262 PMCID: PMC10018345 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkac1253] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/14/2022] [Revised: 11/22/2022] [Accepted: 12/15/2022] [Indexed: 01/12/2023] Open
Abstract
The sequence-based predictors of RNA-binding residues (RBRs) are trained on either structure-annotated or disorder-annotated binding regions. A recent study of predictors of protein-binding residues shows that they are plagued by high levels of cross-predictions (protein binding residues are predicted as nucleic acid binding) and that structure-trained predictors perform poorly for the disorder-annotated regions and vice versa. Consequently, we analyze a representative set of the structure and disorder trained predictors of RBRs to comprehensively assess quality of their predictions. Our empirical analysis that relies on a new and low-similarity benchmark dataset reveals that the structure-trained predictors of RBRs perform well for the structure-annotated proteins while the disorder-trained predictors provide accurate results for the disorder-annotated proteins. However, these methods work only modestly well on the opposite types of annotations, motivating the need for new solutions. Using an empirical approach, we design HybridRNAbind meta-model that generates accurate predictions and low amounts of cross-predictions when tested on data that combines structure and disorder-annotated RBRs. We release this meta-model as a convenient webserver which is available at https://www.csuligroup.com/hybridRNAbind/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fuhao Zhang
- Hunan Provincial Key Lab on Bioinformatics, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
| | - Min Li
- Hunan Provincial Key Lab on Bioinformatics, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
| | - Jian Zhang
- School of Computer and Information Technology, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang 464000, China
| | - Lukasz Kurgan
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284, USA
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4
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Han B, Ren C, Wang W, Li J, Gong X. Computational Prediction of Protein Intrinsically Disordered Region Related Interactions and Functions. Genes (Basel) 2023; 14:432. [PMID: 36833360 PMCID: PMC9956190 DOI: 10.3390/genes14020432] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/31/2022] [Revised: 02/02/2023] [Accepted: 02/05/2023] [Indexed: 02/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDPs) and Regions (IDRs) exist widely. Although without well-defined structures, they participate in many important biological processes. In addition, they are also widely related to human diseases and have become potential targets in drug discovery. However, there is a big gap between the experimental annotations related to IDPs/IDRs and their actual number. In recent decades, the computational methods related to IDPs/IDRs have been developed vigorously, including predicting IDPs/IDRs, the binding modes of IDPs/IDRs, the binding sites of IDPs/IDRs, and the molecular functions of IDPs/IDRs according to different tasks. In view of the correlation between these predictors, we have reviewed these prediction methods uniformly for the first time, summarized their computational methods and predictive performance, and discussed some problems and perspectives.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bingqing Han
- Mathematical Intelligence Application Lab, Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
| | - Chongjiao Ren
- Mathematical Intelligence Application Lab, Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
| | - Wenda Wang
- Mathematical Intelligence Application Lab, Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
| | - Jiashan Li
- Mathematical Intelligence Application Lab, Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
| | - Xinqi Gong
- Mathematical Intelligence Application Lab, Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
- Beijing Academy of Intelligence, Beijing 100083, China
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5
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Zhang F, Li M, Zhang J, Shi W, Kurgan L. DeepPRObind: Modular Deep Learner that Accurately Predicts Structure and Disorder-Annotated Protein Binding Residues. J Mol Biol 2023:167945. [PMID: 36621533 DOI: 10.1016/j.jmb.2023.167945] [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: 09/19/2022] [Revised: 12/15/2022] [Accepted: 01/01/2023] [Indexed: 01/07/2023]
Abstract
Current sequence-based predictors of protein-binding residues (PBRs) belong to two distinct categories: structure-trained vs. intrinsic disorder-trained. Since disordered PBRs differ from structured PBRs in several ways, including ability to bind multiple partners by folding into different conformations and enrichment in different amino acids, the structure-trained and disorder-trained predictors were shown to provide inaccurate results for the other annotation type. A simple consensus-based solution that combines structure- and disorder-trained methods provides limited levels of predictive performance and generates relatively many cross-predictions, where residues that interact with other ligand types are predicted as PBRs. We address this unsolved problem by designing a novel and fast deep-learner, DeepPRObind, that relies on carefully designed modular convolutional architecture and uses innovative aggregate input features. Comparative empirical tests on a low-similarity test dataset reveal that DeepPRObind generates accurate predictions of structured and disordered PBRs and low amounts of cross-predictions, outperforming a comprehensive collection of 12 predictors of PBRs. Given the relatively low runtime of DeepPRObind (40 seconds per protein), we further validate its results based on an analysis of putative PBRs in the yeast proteome, confirming that interactions in disordered regions are enriched among hub proteins. We release DeepPRObind as a convenient web server at https://www.csuligroup.com/DeepPRObind/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fuhao Zhang
- Hunan Provincial Key Lab on Bioinformatics, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
| | - Min Li
- Hunan Provincial Key Lab on Bioinformatics, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China.
| | - Jian Zhang
- School of Computer and Information Technology, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang 464000, China
| | - Wenbo Shi
- Hunan Provincial Key Lab on Bioinformatics, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
| | - Lukasz Kurgan
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284, USA.
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6
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Waury K, Willemse EAJ, Vanmechelen E, Zetterberg H, Teunissen CE, Abeln S. Bioinformatics tools and data resources for assay development of fluid protein biomarkers. Biomark Res 2022; 10:83. [DOI: 10.1186/s40364-022-00425-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/19/2022] [Accepted: 10/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
AbstractFluid protein biomarkers are important tools in clinical research and health care to support diagnosis and to monitor patients. Especially within the field of dementia, novel biomarkers could address the current challenges of providing an early diagnosis and of selecting trial participants. While the great potential of fluid biomarkers is recognized, their implementation in routine clinical use has been slow. One major obstacle is the often unsuccessful translation of biomarker candidates from explorative high-throughput techniques to sensitive antibody-based immunoassays. In this review, we propose the incorporation of bioinformatics into the workflow of novel immunoassay development to overcome this bottleneck and thus facilitate the development of novel biomarkers towards clinical laboratory practice. Due to the rapid progress within the field of bioinformatics many freely available and easy-to-use tools and data resources exist which can aid the researcher at various stages. Current prediction methods and databases can support the selection of suitable biomarker candidates, as well as the choice of appropriate commercial affinity reagents. Additionally, we examine methods that can determine or predict the epitope - an antibody’s binding region on its antigen - and can help to make an informed choice on the immunogenic peptide used for novel antibody production. Selected use cases for biomarker candidates help illustrate the application and interpretation of the introduced tools.
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7
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Akbayrak IY, Caglayan SI, Kurgan L, Uversky VN, Coskuner-Weber O. Insights into the structural properties of SARS-CoV-2 main protease. Curr Res Struct Biol 2022; 4:349-355. [DOI: 10.1016/j.crstbi.2022.11.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2022] [Revised: 11/23/2022] [Accepted: 11/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/27/2022] Open
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8
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Chen R, Li X, Yang Y, Song X, Wang C, Qiao D. Prediction of protein-protein interaction sites in intrinsically disordered proteins. Front Mol Biosci 2022; 9:985022. [PMID: 36250006 PMCID: PMC9567019 DOI: 10.3389/fmolb.2022.985022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/03/2022] [Accepted: 07/27/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) participate in many biological processes by interacting with other proteins, including the regulation of transcription, translation, and the cell cycle. With the increasing amount of disorder sequence data available, it is thus crucial to identify the IDP binding sites for functional annotation of these proteins. Over the decades, many computational approaches have been developed to predict protein-protein binding sites of IDP (IDP-PPIS) based on protein sequence information. Moreover, there are new IDP-PPIS predictors developed every year with the rapid development of artificial intelligence. It is thus necessary to provide an up-to-date overview of these methods in this field. In this paper, we collected 30 representative predictors published recently and summarized the databases, features and algorithms. We described the procedure how the features were generated based on public data and used for the prediction of IDP-PPIS, along with the methods to generate the feature representations. All the predictors were divided into three categories: scoring functions, machine learning-based prediction, and consensus approaches. For each category, we described the details of algorithms and their performances. Hopefully, our manuscript will not only provide a full picture of the status quo of IDP binding prediction, but also a guide for selecting different methods. More importantly, it will shed light on the inspirations for future development trends and principles.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ranran Chen
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- National Institute of Health Data Science of China, Shandong University, Jinan, China
| | - Xinlu Li
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- National Institute of Health Data Science of China, Shandong University, Jinan, China
| | - Yaqing Yang
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- National Institute of Health Data Science of China, Shandong University, Jinan, China
| | - Xixi Song
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- National Institute of Health Data Science of China, Shandong University, Jinan, China
| | - Cheng Wang
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- National Institute of Health Data Science of China, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- *Correspondence: Cheng Wang, ; Dongdong Qiao,
| | - Dongdong Qiao
- Shandong Mental Health Center, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- *Correspondence: Cheng Wang, ; Dongdong Qiao,
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9
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Biró B, Zhao B, Kurgan L. Complementarity of the residue-level protein function and structure predictions in human proteins. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2022; 20:2223-2234. [PMID: 35615015 PMCID: PMC9118482 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2022.05.003] [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: 02/21/2022] [Revised: 05/02/2022] [Accepted: 05/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Sequence-based predictors of the residue-level protein function and structure cover a broad spectrum of characteristics including intrinsic disorder, secondary structure, solvent accessibility and binding to nucleic acids. They were catalogued and evaluated in numerous surveys and assessments. However, methods focusing on a given characteristic are studied separately from predictors of other characteristics, while they are typically used on the same proteins. We fill this void by studying complementarity of a representative collection of methods that target different predictions using a large, taxonomically consistent, and low similarity dataset of human proteins. First, we bridge the gap between the communities that develop structure-trained vs. disorder-trained predictors of binding residues. Motivated by a recent study of the protein-binding residue predictions, we empirically find that combining the structure-trained and disorder-trained predictors of the DNA-binding and RNA-binding residues leads to substantial improvements in predictive quality. Second, we investigate whether diverse predictors generate results that accurately reproduce relations between secondary structure, solvent accessibility, interaction sites, and intrinsic disorder that are present in the experimental data. Our empirical analysis concludes that predictions accurately reflect all combinations of these relations. Altogether, this study provides unique insights that support combining results produced by diverse residue-level predictors of protein function and structure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bálint Biró
- Institute of Genetics and Biotechnology, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Gödöllő, Hungary
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, United States
| | - Bi Zhao
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, United States
| | - Lukasz Kurgan
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, United States
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10
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Zhao B, Kurgan L. Deep Learning in Prediction of Intrinsic Disorder in Proteins. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2022; 20:1286-1294. [PMID: 35356546 PMCID: PMC8927795 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2022.03.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/10/2022] [Revised: 03/04/2022] [Accepted: 03/04/2022] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
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11
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Kurgan L. Resources for computational prediction of intrinsic disorder in proteins. Methods 2022; 204:132-141. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2022.03.018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2022] [Revised: 03/25/2022] [Accepted: 03/29/2022] [Indexed: 12/26/2022] Open
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12
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Zhang F, Zhao B, Shi W, Li M, Kurgan L. DeepDISOBind: accurate prediction of RNA-, DNA- and protein-binding intrinsically disordered residues with deep multi-task learning. Brief Bioinform 2021; 23:6461158. [PMID: 34905768 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbab521] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2021] [Revised: 10/30/2021] [Accepted: 11/14/2021] [Indexed: 12/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Proteins with intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are common among eukaryotes. Many IDRs interact with nucleic acids and proteins. Annotation of these interactions is supported by computational predictors, but to date, only one tool that predicts interactions with nucleic acids was released, and recent assessments demonstrate that current predictors offer modest levels of accuracy. We have developed DeepDISOBind, an innovative deep multi-task architecture that accurately predicts deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)-, ribonucleic acid (RNA)- and protein-binding IDRs from protein sequences. DeepDISOBind relies on an information-rich sequence profile that is processed by an innovative multi-task deep neural network, where subsequent layers are gradually specialized to predict interactions with specific partner types. The common input layer links to a layer that differentiates protein- and nucleic acid-binding, which further links to layers that discriminate between DNA and RNA interactions. Empirical tests show that this multi-task design provides statistically significant gains in predictive quality across the three partner types when compared to a single-task design and a representative selection of the existing methods that cover both disorder- and structure-trained tools. Analysis of the predictions on the human proteome reveals that DeepDISOBind predictions can be encoded into protein-level propensities that accurately predict DNA- and RNA-binding proteins and protein hubs. DeepDISOBind is available at https://www.csuligroup.com/DeepDISOBind/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fuhao Zhang
- Hunan Provincial Key Lab on Bioinformatics, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China
| | - Bi Zhao
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 23284, USA
| | - Wenbo Shi
- Hunan Provincial Key Lab on Bioinformatics, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China
| | - Min Li
- Hunan Provincial Key Lab on Bioinformatics, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China
| | - Lukasz Kurgan
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 23284, USA
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13
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Zhang J, Ghadermarzi S, Katuwawala A, Kurgan L. DNAgenie: accurate prediction of DNA-type-specific binding residues in protein sequences. Brief Bioinform 2021; 22:6355416. [PMID: 34415020 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbab336] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/29/2021] [Revised: 07/02/2021] [Accepted: 07/28/2021] [Indexed: 01/02/2023] Open
Abstract
Efforts to elucidate protein-DNA interactions at the molecular level rely in part on accurate predictions of DNA-binding residues in protein sequences. While there are over a dozen computational predictors of the DNA-binding residues, they are DNA-type agnostic and significantly cross-predict residues that interact with other ligands as DNA binding. We leverage a custom-designed machine learning architecture to introduce DNAgenie, first-of-its-kind predictor of residues that interact with A-DNA, B-DNA and single-stranded DNA. DNAgenie uses a comprehensive physiochemical profile extracted from an input protein sequence and implements a two-step refinement process to provide accurate predictions and to minimize the cross-predictions. Comparative tests on an independent test dataset demonstrate that DNAgenie outperforms the current methods that we adapt to predict residue-level interactions with the three DNA types. Further analysis finds that the use of the second (refinement) step leads to a substantial reduction in the cross predictions. Empirical tests show that DNAgenie's outputs that are converted to coarse-grained protein-level predictions compare favorably against recent tools that predict which DNA-binding proteins interact with double-stranded versus single-stranded DNAs. Moreover, predictions from the sequences of the whole human proteome reveal that the results produced by DNAgenie substantially overlap with the known DNA-binding proteins while also including promising leads for several hundred previously unknown putative DNA binders. These results suggest that DNAgenie is a valuable tool for the sequence-based characterization of protein functions. The DNAgenie's webserver is available at http://biomine.cs.vcu.edu/servers/DNAgenie/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jian Zhang
- School of Computer and Information Technology at the Xinyang Normal University, No.237, Nanhu Road, Xinyang 464000, Henan Province, P.R. China
| | - Sina Ghadermarzi
- Department of Computer Science at the Virginia Commonwealth University, 401 West Main Street, Room E4225, Richmond, Virginia 23284, USA
| | - Akila Katuwawala
- Department of Computer Science from the Virginia Commonwealth University, 401 West Main Street, Room E4225, Richmond, Virginia 23284, USA
| | - Lukasz Kurgan
- Department of Computer Science at the Virginia Commonwealth University, 401 West Main Street, Room E4225, Richmond, Virginia 23284, USA
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14
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Beg AZ, Farhat N, Khan AU. Designing multi-epitope vaccine candidates against functional amyloids in Pseudomonas aeruginosa through immunoinformatic and structural bioinformatics approach. INFECTION GENETICS AND EVOLUTION 2021; 93:104982. [PMID: 34186254 DOI: 10.1016/j.meegid.2021.104982] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2021] [Revised: 06/09/2021] [Accepted: 06/24/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) displays high drug resistance and biofilm-mediated adaptability, which makes its infections difficult to treat. Alternative intervention methods and targets have made such infections treatment manageable. One of the biofilm components, functional amyloids of Pseudomonas (Fap) is correlated positively with virulence and mucoidy phenotype found in infection in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Extracellular accessibility, conservation across P. aeruginosa isolates and linkage with lung infections phenotype in CF patients, makes Fap a promising intervention target. Furthermore, the reported effect of bacterial amyloid on neuronal function and immune response makes it a targetable candidate. In the current study, Fap C protein and its immediate interactions were explored to extract antigenic T-cell and B-cell epitopes. A combination of epitopes and peptide adjuvants has been linked to derive vaccine candidate structures. The vaccine candidates were validated for antigenicity, allergenicity, physiochemical properties, stability and interactions with TLRs and MHC alleles. Immunosimulation studies have demonstrated that vaccines elicit Th1 dominated response, which can assist in good prognosis of infection in CF patients.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ayesha Z Beg
- Medical Microbiology and Molecular Biology Lab., Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
| | - Nabeela Farhat
- Medical Microbiology and Molecular Biology Lab., Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
| | - Asad U Khan
- Medical Microbiology and Molecular Biology Lab., Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India; Centre for Bioinformatic on Antimicrobial Resistance, IBU, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India.
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15
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Peng Z, Xing Q, Kurgan L. APOD: accurate sequence-based predictor of disordered flexible linkers. Bioinformatics 2021; 36:i754-i761. [PMID: 33381830 PMCID: PMC7773485 DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa808] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 09/07/2020] [Indexed: 12/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Motivation Disordered flexible linkers (DFLs) are abundant and functionally important intrinsically disordered regions that connect protein domains and structural elements within domains and which facilitate disorder-based allosteric regulation. Although computational estimates suggest that thousands of proteins have DFLs, they were annotated experimentally in <200 proteins. This substantial annotation gap can be reduced with the help of accurate computational predictors. The sole predictor of DFLs, DFLpred, trade-off accuracy for shorter runtime by excluding relevant but computationally costly predictive inputs. Moreover, it relies on the local/window-based information while lacking to consider useful protein-level characteristics. Results We conceptualize, design and test APOD (Accurate Predictor Of DFLs), the first highly accurate predictor that utilizes both local- and protein-level inputs that quantify propensity for disorder, sequence composition, sequence conservation and selected putative structural properties. Consequently, APOD offers significantly more accurate predictions when compared with its faster predecessor, DFLpred, and several other alternative ways to predict DFLs. These improvements stem from the use of a more comprehensive set of inputs that cover the protein-level information and the application of a more sophisticated predictive model, a well-parametrized support vector machine. APOD achieves area under the curve = 0.82 (28% improvement over DFLpred) and Matthews correlation coefficient = 0.42 (180% increase over DFLpred) when tested on an independent/low-similarity test dataset. Consequently, APOD is a suitable choice for accurate and small-scale prediction of DFLs. Availability and implementation https://yanglab.nankai.edu.cn/APOD/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhenling Peng
- Center for Applied Mathematics, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China.,School of Statistics and Data Science, Nankai University, Tianjin 300074, China
| | - Qian Xing
- Center for Applied Mathematics, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
| | - Lukasz Kurgan
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284, USA
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Zhao B, Katuwawala A, Oldfield CJ, Dunker AK, Faraggi E, Gsponer J, Kloczkowski A, Malhis N, Mirdita M, Obradovic Z, Söding J, Steinegger M, Zhou Y, Kurgan L. DescribePROT: database of amino acid-level protein structure and function predictions. Nucleic Acids Res 2021; 49:D298-D308. [PMID: 33119734 PMCID: PMC7778963 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkaa931] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/14/2020] [Revised: 09/11/2020] [Accepted: 10/05/2020] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
We present DescribePROT, the database of predicted amino acid-level descriptors of structure and function of proteins. DescribePROT delivers a comprehensive collection of 13 complementary descriptors predicted using 10 popular and accurate algorithms for 83 complete proteomes that cover key model organisms. The current version includes 7.8 billion predictions for close to 600 million amino acids in 1.4 million proteins. The descriptors encompass sequence conservation, position specific scoring matrix, secondary structure, solvent accessibility, intrinsic disorder, disordered linkers, signal peptides, MoRFs and interactions with proteins, DNA and RNAs. Users can search DescribePROT by the amino acid sequence and the UniProt accession number and entry name. The pre-computed results are made available instantaneously. The predictions can be accesses via an interactive graphical interface that allows simultaneous analysis of multiple descriptors and can be also downloaded in structured formats at the protein, proteome and whole database scale. The putative annotations included by DescriPROT are useful for a broad range of studies, including: investigations of protein function, applied projects focusing on therapeutics and diseases, and in the development of predictors for other protein sequence descriptors. Future releases will expand the coverage of DescribePROT. DescribePROT can be accessed at http://biomine.cs.vcu.edu/servers/DESCRIBEPROT/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bi Zhao
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA
| | - Akila Katuwawala
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA
| | | | - A Keith Dunker
- Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA
| | - Eshel Faraggi
- Battelle Center for Mathematical Medicine at the Nationwide Children's Hospital, and Department of Pediatrics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
| | - Jörg Gsponer
- Michael Smith Laboratories, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
| | - Andrzej Kloczkowski
- Battelle Center for Mathematical Medicine at the Nationwide Children's Hospital, and Department of Pediatrics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
| | - Nawar Malhis
- Michael Smith Laboratories, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
| | - Milot Mirdita
- Quantitative and Computational Biology, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Zoran Obradovic
- Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Johannes Söding
- Quantitative and Computational Biology, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Martin Steinegger
- School of Biological Sciences and Institute of Molecular Biology & Genetics, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Yaoqi Zhou
- Institute for Glycomics, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
| | - Lukasz Kurgan
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA
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Katuwawala A, Kurgan L. Comparative Assessment of Intrinsic Disorder Predictions with a Focus on Protein and Nucleic Acid-Binding Proteins. Biomolecules 2020; 10:E1636. [PMID: 33291838 PMCID: PMC7762010 DOI: 10.3390/biom10121636] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2020] [Revised: 11/26/2020] [Accepted: 12/03/2020] [Indexed: 01/18/2023] Open
Abstract
With over 60 disorder predictors, users need help navigating the predictor selection task. We review 28 surveys of disorder predictors, showing that only 11 include assessment of predictive performance. We identify and address a few drawbacks of these past surveys. To this end, we release a novel benchmark dataset with reduced similarity to the training sets of the considered predictors. We use this dataset to perform a first-of-its-kind comparative analysis that targets two large functional families of disordered proteins that interact with proteins and with nucleic acids. We show that limiting sequence similarity between the benchmark and the training datasets has a substantial impact on predictive performance. We also demonstrate that predictive quality is sensitive to the use of the well-annotated order and inclusion of the fully structured proteins in the benchmark datasets, both of which should be considered in future assessments. We identify three predictors that provide favorable results using the new benchmark set. While we find that VSL2B offers the most accurate and robust results overall, ESpritz-DisProt and SPOT-Disorder perform particularly well for disordered proteins. Moreover, we find that predictions for the disordered protein-binding proteins suffer low predictive quality compared to generic disordered proteins and the disordered nucleic acids-binding proteins. This can be explained by the high disorder content of the disordered protein-binding proteins, which makes it difficult for the current methods to accurately identify ordered regions in these proteins. This finding motivates the development of a new generation of methods that would target these difficult-to-predict disordered proteins. We also discuss resources that support users in collecting and identifying high-quality disorder predictions.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Lukasz Kurgan
- Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284, USA;
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