Structure Prediction
Tertiary protein structure: protein folding Three main approaches: [1] experimental determination (X-ray crystallography, NMR) [2] Comparative modeling (based on homology) [3] Ab initio (de novo) prediction (Dr. Ingo Ruczinski at JHSPH)
Experimental approaches to protein structure [1] X-ray crystallography -- Used to determine 80% of structures -- Requires high protein concentration -- Requires crystals -- Able to trace amino acid side chains -- Earliest structure solved was myoglobin [2] NMR -- Magnetic field applied to proteins in solution -- Largest structures: 350 amino acids (40 kD) -- Does not require crystallization
Steps in obtaining a protein structure Target selection Obtain, characterize protein Determine, refine, model the structure Deposit in database
X-ray crystallography Sperm Whale Myoglobin
PDB April 08, 2008 – 50,000 proteins, 25 new experimentally determined structures each day New folds Old folds New PDB structures
Example 1wey
Ab initio protein prediction Starts with an attempt to derive secondary structure from the amino acid sequence – Predicting the likelihood that a subsequence will fold into an alpha- helix, beta-sheet, or coil, using physicochemical parameters or HMMs and ANNs – Able to accurately predict 3/4 of all local structures
Structure Characteristics
Beta Sheets
Ab Inito Prediction
Secondary structure prediction Chou and Fasman (1974) developed an algorithm based on the frequencies of amino acids found in helices, -sheets, and turns. Proline: occurs at turns, but not in helices. GOR (Garnier, Osguthorpe, Robson): related algorithm Modern algorithms: use multiple sequence alignments and achieve higher success rate (about 70-75%) Page
Table
Frequency Domain
Neural Networks
Training the Network Use PDB entries with validated secondary structures Measures of accuracy – Q 3 Score percentage of protein correctly predicted (trains to predicting the most abundant structure) – You get 50% if you just predict everything to be a coil – Most methods get around 60% with this metric
Correlation Coeficient How correlated are the predictions for coils, helix and Beta-sheets to the real structures This ignores what we really want to get to – If the real structure has 3 coils, do we predict 3 coils? Segment overlap score (Sov) gives credit to how protein like the structure is, but it is correlated with Q 3
Fold recognition (structural profiles) Attempts to find the best fit of a raw polypeptide sequence onto a library of known protein folds A prediction of the secondary structure of the unknown is made and compared with the secondary structure of each member of the library of folds
Threading Takes the fold recognition process a step further: – Empirical-energy functions for residue pair interactions are used to mount the unknown onto the putative backbone in the best possible manner
Fold recognition by threading Query sequence Compatibility scores Fold 1 Fold 2 Fold 3 Fold N
CASP cgi
SCOP SCOP: Structural Classification of Proteins.
CATH CATH: Protein Structure Classification Class (C), Architecture (A), Topology (T) and Homologous superfamily (H) Class (C), Architecture (A), Topology (T) and Homologous superfamily (H)