Decision tree-based formation of consensus protein secondary structure prediction

MOTIVATION: Prediction of protein secondary structure provides information that is useful for other prediction methods like fold recognition and ab initio 3D prediction. A consensus prediction constructed from the output of several methods should yield more reliable results than each of the individual methods. METHOD: We present an approach that reveals subtle but systematic differences in the output of different secondary structure prediction methods allowing the derivation of coherent consensus predictions. The method uses a machine learning technique that builds decision trees from existing data. RESULTS: The first results of our analysis show that consensus prediction of protein secondary structure may be improved both quantitatively and qualitatively.     

MUPRED: a tool for bridging the gap between template based methods and sequence profile based methods for protein secondary structure prediction

Predicting secondary structures from a protein sequence is an important step for characterizing the structural properties of a protein. Existing methods for protein secondary structure prediction can be broadly classified into template based or sequence profile based methods. We propose a novel framework that bridges the gap between the two fundamentally different approaches. Our framework integrates the information from the fuzzy k-nearest neighbor algorithm and position-specific scoring matrices using a neural network. It combines the strengths of the two methods and has a better potential to use the information in both the sequence and structure databases than existing methods. We implemented the framework into a software system MUPRED. MUPRED has achieved three-state prediction accuracy (Q3) ranging from 79.2 to 80.14%, depending on which benchmark dataset is used. A higher Q3 can be achieved if a query protein has a significant sequence identity (>25%) to a template in PDB. MUPRED also estimates the prediction accuracy at the individual residue level more quantitatively than existing methods. The MUPRED web server and executables are freely available at http://digbio.missouri.edu/mupred.     

Exploring the extremes of sequence/structure space with ensemble fold recognition in the program Phyre

Structural and functional annotation of the large and growing database of genomic sequences is a major problem in modern biology. Protein structure prediction by detecting remote homology to known structures is a well-established and successful annotation technique. However, the broad spectrum of evolutionary change that accompanies the divergence of close homologues to become remote homologues cannot easily be captured with a single algorithm. Recent advances to tackle this problem have involved the use of multiple predictive algorithms available on the Internet. Here we demonstrate how such ensembles of predictors can be designed in-house under controlled conditions and permit significant improvements in recognition by using a concept taken from protein loop energetics and applying it to the general problem of 3D clustering. We have developed a stringent test that simulates the situation where a protein sequence of interest is submitted to multiple different algorithms and not one of these algorithms can make a confident (95%) correct assignment. A method of meta-server prediction (Phyre) that exploits the benefits of a controlled environment for the component methods was implemented. At 95% precision or higher, Phyre identified 64.0% of all correct homologous query-template relationships, and 84.0% of the individual test query proteins could be accurately annotated. In comparison to the improvement that the single best fold recognition algorithm (according to training) has over PSI-Blast, this represents a 29.6% increase in the number of correct homologous query-template relationships, and a 46.2% increase in the number of accurately annotated queries. It has been well recognised in fold prediction, other bioinformatics applications, and in many other areas, that ensemble predictions generally are superior in accuracy to any of the component individual methods. However there is a paucity of information as to why the ensemble methods are superior and indeed this has never been systematically addressed in fold recognition. Here we show that the source of ensemble power stems from noise reduction in filtering out false positive matches. The results indicate greater coverage of sequence space and improved model quality, which can consequently lead to a reduction in the experimental workload of structural genomics initiatives.     

MANIFOLD: protein fold recognition based on secondary structure, sequence similarity and enzyme classification

We present a protein fold recognition method, MANIFOLD, which uses the similarity between target and template proteins in predicted secondary structure, sequence and enzyme code to predict the fold of the target protein. We developed a non-linear ranking scheme in order to combine the scores of the three different similarity measures used. For a difficult test set of proteins with very little sequence similarity, the program predicts the fold class correctly in 34% of cases. This is an over twofold increase in accuracy compared with sequence-based methods such as PSI-BLAST or GenTHREADER, which score 13-14% correct first hits for the same test set. The functional similarity term increases the prediction accuracy by up to 3% compared with using the combination of secondary structure similarity and PSI-BLAST alone. We argue that using functional and secondary structure information can increase the fold recognition beyond sequence similarity.     

Protein structure prediction

Current methods developed for predicting protein structure are reviewed. The most widely used algorithms of Chou and Fasman and Garnier et al for predicting secondary structure are compared to the most recent ones including sequence similarity methods, neural network, pattern recognition or joint prediction methods. The best of these methods correctly predict 63-65% of the residues in the database with cross-validation for 3 conformations, helix, beta strand and coli with a standard deviation of 6-8% per protein. However, when a homologous protein is already in the database, the accuracy of prediction by the similarity peptide method of Levin and Garnier reaches about 90%. Some conclusions can be drawn on the mechanism of protein folding. As all the prediction methods only use the local sequence for prediction (+/- 8 residues maximum) one can infer that 65% of the conformation of a residue is dictated on average by the local sequence, the rest is brought by the folding. The best predicted proteins or peptide segments are those for which the folding has less effect on the conformation. Presently, prediction of tertiary structure is only of practical use when the structure of a homologous protein is already known. Amino acid alignment to define residues of equivalent spatial position is critical for modelling of the protein. We showed for serine proteases that secondary structure prediction can help to define a better alignment. Non-homologous segments of the polypeptide chain, such as loops, libraries of known loops and/or energy minimization with various force fields, are used without yet giving satisfactory solutions. An example of modelling by homology, aided by secondary structure prediction on 2 regulatory proteins, Fnr and FixK is presented.     

Revolutions in RNA secondary structure prediction

RNA structure formation is hierarchical and, therefore, secondary structure, the sum of canonical base-pairs, can generally be predicted without knowledge of the three-dimensional structure. Secondary structure prediction algorithms evolved from predicting a single, lowest free energy structure to their current state where statistics can be determined from the thermodynamic ensemble. This article reviews the free energy minimization technique and the salient revolutions in the dynamic programming algorithm methods for secondary structure prediction. Emphasis is placed on highlighting the recently developed method, which statistically samples structures from the complete Boltzmann ensemble.     

Incorporating global features of RNA motifs in predictions for an ensemble of secondary structures for encapsidated MS2 bacteriophage RNA

The secondary structure of encapsidated MS2 genomic RNA poses an interesting RNA folding challenge. Cryoelectron microscopy has demonstrated that encapsidated MS2 RNA is well-ordered. Models of MS2 assembly suggest that the RNA hairpin-protein interactions and the appropriate placement of hairpins in the MS2 RNA secondary structure can guide the formation of the correct icosahedral particle. The RNA hairpin motif that is recognized by the MS2 capsid protein dimers, however, is energetically unfavorable, and thus free energy predictions are biased against this motif. Computer programs called Crumple, Sliding Windows, and Assembly provide useful tools for prediction of viral RNA secondary structures when the traditional assumptions of RNA structure prediction by free energy minimization may not apply. These methods allow incorporation of global features of the RNA fold and motifs that are difficult to include directly in minimum free energy predictions. For example, with MS2 RNA the experimental data from SELEX experiments, crystallography, and theoretical calculations of the path for the series of hairpins can be incorporated in the RNA structure prediction, and thus the influence of free energy considerations can be modulated. This approach thoroughly explores conformational space and generates an ensemble of secondary structures. The predictions from this new approach can test hypotheses and models of viral assembly and guide construction of complete three-dimensional models of virus particles.     

基于SVM的蛋白质二级结构预测

蛋白质结构预测是现代计算生物领域最重要的问题之一,而蛋白质二级结构预测是蛋白质高级结构预测的基础。目前蛋白质二级结构的预测方法较多,其中SVM方法取得了较高的预测精度。重在阐述使用SVM用于蛋白质二级结构预测的步骤,以及与其他方法进行比较时应该注意的事项,为下一步的研究提供参考及启发。     

Discriminating acidic and alkaline enzymes using a random forest model with secondary structure amino acid composition

Understating the adaptation mechanism of enzymes to pH extremes and discriminating them is a challenging task and would help to design stable enzymes. In this work, we have systematically analyzed the secondary structure amino acid compositions of 105 acidic and 111 alkaline enzymes, respectively. We found that the propensity of the individual residues to participate in different secondary structures might be a general stability mechanism for their adaptation to pH extremes. Based on it, we present a secondary structure amino acid composition method for extracting useful features from sequence, and a novel ensemble classifier named random forest was used. The overall prediction accuracy evaluated by the 10-fold cross-validation reached 90.7%. Comparing our method with other feature extraction methods, the improvement of the overall prediction accuracy ranged from 5.5% to 21.2%. The random forests algorithm also outperformed other machine learning techniques with an improvement ranging from 3.2% to 19.9%.     

蛋白质二级结构预测服务器PSRSM

蛋白质二级结构预测是蛋白质结构研究的一个重要环节,大量的新预测方法被提出的同时,也不断有新的蛋白质二级结构预测服务器出现。试验选取7种目前常用的蛋白质二级结构预测服务器:PSRSM、SPOT-1D、MUFOLD、Spider3、RaptorX,Psipred和Jpred4,对它们进行了使用方法的介绍和预测效果的评估。随机选取了PDB在2018年8月至11月份发布的180条蛋白质作为测试集,评估角度为:Q3、Sov、边界识别率、内部识别率、转角C识别率,折叠E识别率和螺旋H识别率七种角度。上述服务器180条测试数据的Q3结果分别为:89.96%、88.18%、86.74%、85.77%、83.61%,79.72%和78.29%。结果表明PSRSM的预测结果最好。180条测试集中,以同源性30%,40%,70%分类的实验结果中,PSRSM的Q3结果分别为:89.49%、90.53%、89.87%,均优于其他服务器。实验结果表明,蛋白质二级结构预测可从结合多种深度学习方法以及使用大数据训练模型方向做进一步的研究。     

QUASAR--scoring and ranking of sequence-structure alignments

SUMMARY: Sequence-structure alignments are a common means for protein structure prediction in the fields of fold recognition and homology modeling, and there is a broad variety of programs that provide such alignments based on sequence similarity, secondary structure or contact potentials. Nevertheless, finding the best sequence-structure alignment in a pool of alignments remains a difficult problem. QUASAR (quality of sequence-structure alignments ranking) provides a unifying framework for scoring sequence-structure alignments that aids finding well-performing combinations of well-known and custom-made scoring schemes. Those scoring functions can be benchmarked against widely accepted quality scores like MaxSub, TMScore, Touch and APDB, thus enabling users to test their own alignment scores against 'standard-of-truth' structure-based scores. Furthermore, individual score combinations can be optimized with respect to benchmark sets based on known structural relationships using QUASAR's in-built optimization routines.     

Evaluation and improvement of multiple sequence methods for protein secondary structure prediction

A new dataset of 396 protein domains is developed and used to evaluate the performance of the protein secondary structure prediction algorithms DSC, PHD, NNSSP, and PREDATOR. The maximum theoretical Q3 accuracy for combination of these methods is shown to be 78%. A simple consensus prediction on the 396 domains, with automatically generated multiple sequence alignments gives an average Q3 prediction accuracy of 72.9%. This is a 1% improvement over PHD, which was the best single method evaluated. Segment Overlap Accuracy (SOV) is 75.4% for the consensus method on the 396-protein set. The secondary structure definition method DSSP defines 8 states, but these are reduced by most authors to 3 for prediction. Application of the different published 8- to 3-state reduction methods shows variation of over 3% on apparent prediction accuracy. This suggests that care should be taken to compare methods by the same reduction method. Two new sequence datasets (CB513 and CB251) are derived which are suitable for cross-validation of secondary structure prediction methods without artifacts due to internal homology. A fully automatic World Wide Web service that predicts protein secondary structure by a combination of methods is available via http://barton.ebi.ac.uk/.     

GPMAW--a software tool for analyzing proteins and peptides.

General Protein/Mass Analysis for Windows (GPMAW) is a valuable piece of software for any molecular biologist, biochemist or mass spectrometrist wishing to analyze protein or peptide sequences. All steps from the acquisition of protein sequence from a built-in web interface, to proteolytic digests, theoretical peptide fragmentation, detailed annotation of sequences and secondary structure prediction, can be performed rapidly and intuitively without first having to spend days reading manuals.     

The recognition of multi-class protein folds by adding average chemical shifts of secondary structure elements

The recognition of protein folds is an important step in the prediction of protein structure and function. Recently, an increasing number of researchers have sought to improve the methods for protein fold recognition. Following the construction of a dataset consisting of 27 protein fold classes by Ding and Dubchak in 2001, prediction algorithms, parameters and the construction of new datasets have improved for the prediction of protein folds. In this study, we reorganized a dataset consisting of 76-fold classes constructed by Liu et al. and used the values of the increment of diversity, average chemical shifts of secondary structure elements and secondary structure motifs as feature parameters in the recognition of multi-class protein folds. With the combined feature vector as the input parameter for the Random Forests algorithm and ensemble classification strategy, we propose a novel method to identify the 76 protein fold classes. The overall accuracy of the test dataset using an independent test was 66.69%; when the training and test sets were combined, with 5-fold cross-validation, the overall accuracy was 73.43%. This method was further used to predict the test dataset and the corresponding structural classification of the first 27-protein fold class dataset, resulting in overall accuracies of 79.66% and 93.40%, respectively. Moreover, when the training set and test sets were combined, the accuracy using 5-fold cross-validation was 81.21%. Additionally, this approach resulted in improved prediction results using the 27-protein fold class dataset constructed by Ding and Dubchak.     

PROFcon: novel prediction of long-range contacts

MOTIVATION: Despite the continuing advance in the experimental determination of protein structures, the gap between the number of known protein sequences and structures continues to increase. Prediction methods can bridge this sequence-structure gap only partially. Better predictions of non-local contacts between residues could improve comparative modeling, fold recognition and could assist in the experimental structure determination. RESULTS: Here, we introduced PROFcon, a novel contact prediction method that combines information from alignments, from predictions of secondary structure and solvent accessibility, from the region between two residues and from the average properties of the entire protein. In contrast to some other methods, PROFcon predicted short and long proteins at similar levels of accuracy. As expected, PROFcon was clearly less accurate when tested on sparse evolutionary profiles, that is, on families with few homologs. Prediction accuracy was highest for proteins belonging to the SCOP alpha/beta class. PROFcon compared favorably with state-of-the-art prediction methods at the CASP6 meeting. While the performance may still be perceived as low, our method clearly pushed the mark higher. Furthermore, predictions are already accurate enough to seed predictions of global features of protein structure.     

GLASS: A tool to visualize protein structure prediction data in three dimensions and evaluate their consistency

When a protein sequence does not share any significant sequence similarity with a protein of known structure, homology modeling cannot be applied. However, many novel and interesting methods, such as secondary structure prediction, fold recognition, and prediction of long-range interactions, are being developed and have been shown to be reasonably successful in predicting protein structures from sequence data and evolutionary information. The a priori evaluation of the correctness of a prediction obtained by one of these methods is however often problematic. Consequently, it is important to use all available information provided by as many different methods as possible and all the available experimental data about the protein of interest, since the consistency of the results is indicative of the reliability of the prediction. Hence the need has arisen for suitable tools able to compare results provided by different methods and evaluate their consistency. We have therefore constructed GLASS, a general platform to read, visualize, compare, and evaluate prediction results from many different sources and to project these prediction results into three dimensions. In addition, GLASS allows the comparison of selected parameters calculated for a model with the distribution observed in real protein structures, thus providing an easy way to test new methods for evaluating the likelihood of different structural models. GLASS can be considered as a “workbench” for structural predictions useful to both experimentalists and theoreticians. Proteins 30:339–351, 1998. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

RNA folding with soft constraints: reconciliation of probing data and thermodynamic secondary structure prediction

Thermodynamic folding algorithms and structure probing experiments are commonly used to determine the secondary structure of RNAs. Here we propose a formal framework to reconcile information from both prediction algorithms and probing experiments. The thermodynamic energy parameters are adjusted using 'pseudo-energies' to minimize the discrepancy between prediction and experiment. Our framework differs from related approaches that used pseudo-energies in several key aspects. (i) The energy model is only changed when necessary and no adjustments are made if prediction and experiment are consistent. (ii) Pseudo-energies remain biophysically interpretable and hold positional information where experiment and model disagree. (iii) The whole thermodynamic ensemble of structures is considered thus allowing to reconstruct mixtures of suboptimal structures from seemingly contradicting data. (iv) The noise of the energy model and the experimental data is explicitly modeled leading to an intuitive weighting factor through which the problem can be seen as folding with 'soft' constraints of different strength. We present an efficient algorithm to iteratively calculate pseudo-energies within this framework and demonstrate how this approach can be used in combination with SHAPE chemical probing data to improve secondary structure prediction. We further demonstrate that the pseudo-energies correlate with biophysical effects that are known to affect RNA folding such as chemical nucleotide modifications and protein binding.     

Detection of reliable and unexpected protein fold predictions using 3D-Jury

3D-Jury is a fully automated protein structure meta prediction system accessible via the Meta Server interface (http://BioInfo.PL/Meta). This is one of the meta predictors, which have made a dramatic, unprecedented impact on the last CASP-5 experiment. The 3D-Jury is comparable with other meta servers but it has the highest combined specificity and sensitivity. The presented method is also very simple and versatile and can be used to create meta predictions even from sets of models produced by humans. An additional and very important and novel feature of the system is the high correlation between the reported confidence score and the accuracy of the model. The number of correctly predicted residues can be estimated directly from the prediction score. The high reliability of the method enables any biologist to submit a target of interest to the Meta Server and screen with relatively high confidence, whether the target can be predicted by fold recognition methods while being unpredictable using standard approaches like PSI-Blast. This can point to interesting relationships which could have been missed in annotations of proteins or genomes and provide very valuable information for novel scientific discoveries.     

Arby: automatic protein structure prediction using profile-profile alignment and confidence measures

MOTIVATION: Arby is a new server for protein structure prediction that combines several homology-based methods for predicting the three-dimensional structure of a protein, given its sequence. The methods used include a threading approach, which makes use of structural information, and a profile-profile alignment approach that incorporates secondary structure predictions. The combination of the different methods with the help of empirically derived confidence measures affords reliable template selection. RESULTS: According to the recent CAFASP3 experiment, the server is one of the most sensitive methods for predicting the structure of single domain proteins. The quality of template selection is assessed using a fold-recognition experiment. AVAILABILITY: The Arby server is available through the portal of the Helmholtz Network for Bioinformatics at http://www.hnbioinfo.de under the protein structure category.     

Efficient ensemble schemes for protein secondary structure prediction

This paper proposes an efficient ensemble system to tackle the protein secondary structure prediction problem with neural networks as base classifiers. The experimental results show that the multi-layer system can lead to better results. When deploying more accurate classifiers, the higher accuracy of the ensemble system can be obtained.