Improved prediction of trans-membrane spans in proteins using an Artificial Neural Network.

ABSTRACT: Tools for the identification of trans-membrane spans from the protein sequence are widely used in the experimental community. Computational structural biology seeks to increase the prediction accuracy of such methods since they represent a first step towards membrane protein tertiary structure prediction from the amino acid sequence. We introduce a predictor that is able to identify trans-membrane spans from the sequence of a protein. The novelty of the approach presented here is the simultaneous prediction of trans-membrane spanning ?-helices and ?-strands within a single tool. An artificial neural network was trained on databases of 102 membrane proteins and 3499 soluble proteins. Prediction accuracies of up to 92% for soluble residues, 75% for residues in the interface, and 73% for TM residues are achieved. On average the algorithm predicts 79% of the residues correctly which is a substantial improvement from a previously published implementation which achieved 57% accuracy (Koehler et al., Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics, 2008). The algorithm was applied to four membrane proteins to illustrate the applicability to both ?-helical bundles and ?-barrels.

SUBMITTER: Koehler J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5065243 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Mar-Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature