Discovery of a significant,nontopological preference for antiparallel alignment of helices with parallel regions in sheets

To help elucidate the role of secondary structure packing preferences in protein folding, here we present an analysis of the packing geometry observed between alpha-helices and between alpha-helices and beta-sheets in 1316 diverse, nonredundant protein structures. Finite-length vectors were fit to the alpha-carbon atoms in each of the helices and strands, and the packing angle between the vectors, Omega, was determined at the closest point of approach within each helix-helix or helix-sheet pair. Helix-sheet interactions were found in 391 of the proteins, and the distributions of Omega values were calculated for all the helix-sheet and helix-helix interactions. The packing angle preferences for helix-helix interactions are similar to those previously observed. However, analysis of helix-strand packing preferences uncovered a remarkable tendency for helices to align antiparallel to parallel regions of beta-sheets, independent of the topological constraints or prevalence of beta-alpha-beta motifs in the proteins. This packing angle preference is significantly diminished in helix interactions involving mixed and antiparallel beta-sheets, suggesting a role for helix-sheet dipole alignment in guiding supersecondary structure formation in protein folding. This knowledge of preferred packing angles can be used to guide the engineering of stable protein modules.     

Prediction of apoptosis protein subcellular location using improved hybrid approach and pseudo-amino acid composition

Apoptosis proteins are very important for understanding the mechanism of programmed cell death. The apoptosis protein localization can provide valuable information about its molecular function. The prediction of localization of an apoptosis protein is a challenging task. In our previous work we proposed an increment of diversity (ID) method using protein sequence information for this prediction task. In this work, based on the concept of Chou's pseudo-amino acid composition [Chou, K.C., 2001. Prediction of protein cellular attributes using pseudo-amino acid composition. Proteins: Struct. Funct. Genet. (Erratum: Chou, K.C., 2001, vol. 44, 60) 43, 246-255, Chou, K.C., 2005. Using amphiphilic pseudo-amino acid composition to predict enzyme subfamily classes. Bioinformatics 21, 10-19], a different pseudo-amino acid composition by using the hydropathy distribution information is introduced. A novel ID_SVM algorithm combined ID with support vector machine (SVM) is proposed. This method is applied to three data sets (317 apoptosis proteins, 225 apoptosis proteins and 98 apoptosis proteins). The higher predictive success rates than the previous algorithms are obtained by the jackknife tests.     

Prediction of the subcellular location of apoptosis proteins

Apoptosis proteins have a central role in the development and the homeostasis of an organism. These proteins are very important for understanding the mechanism of programmed cell death. The function of an apoptosis protein is closely related to its subcellular location. Based on the concept that the subcellular location of an apoptosis protein is mainly determined by its amino acid sequence, a new algorithm for prediction of the subcellular location of an apoptosis protein is proposed. By using of a distinctive set of information parameters derived from the primary sequence of 317 apoptosis proteins, the increment of diversity (ID), the sole prediction parameter, is calculated. The higher predictive success rates than the previous other algorithms is obtained by the jackknife tests using the expanded dataset. Our prediction results show that the local compositions of twin amino acids and hydropathy distribution are very useful to predict subcellular location of protein.     

Predicting conotoxin superfamily and family by using pseudo amino acid composition and modified Mahalanobis discriminant

The conotoxin proteins are disulfide rich small peptides that target ion channels and G protein coupled receptors. And they provide promising application in treating some chronic pain, epilepsy, cardiovascular diseases, and so on. Conotoxins may be classified into 11 superfamilies: A, D, I1, I2, J, L, M, O, P, S, and T according to the disulfide connectivity, highly conserved N-terminal precursor sequence and similar mode of actions. Successful prediction mature conotoxin superfamily peptide has important signification for the biological and pharmacological functions of the toxins. In this study, a new algorithm of increment of diversity combined with modified Mahalanobis discriminant is presented to predict five superfamilies by using the pseudo amino acid composition. The results of jackknife cross-validation test show that the overall prediction sensitivity and specificity are 88% and 91%, respectively. The predictive algorithm is also used to predict three O-conotoxin families. The 72% sensitivity and 78% specificity are obtained. These results indicate that the conotoxin superfamily peptides correlate with their amino acid compositions.     

基于离散增量结合支持向量机方法的凋亡蛋白亚细胞位置预测

根据凋亡蛋白的亚细胞位置主要决定于它的氨基酸序列这一观点,基于局部氨基酸序列的n肽组分和序列的亲疏水性分布信息,采用离散增量结合支持向量机(ID_SVM)算法,对六类细胞凋亡蛋白的亚细胞位置进行预测。结果表明,在Re-substitution检验和Jackknife检验下,ID_SVM算法的总体预测成功率分别达到了94.6%和84.2%;在5-fold检验和10-fold检验下,其总体预测成功率也都达到了83%以上。通过比较ID和ID_SVM两种方法的预测能力发现,结合了支持向量机的离散增量算法能够改进预测成功率,结果表明ID_SVM是预测凋亡蛋白亚细胞位置的一种很有效的方法。     

基于蛋白序列的IDQD算法预测蛋白质相互作用

基于蛋白质序列组分信息,提出一个离散增量结合二次判别分析法(IDQD)预测蛋白质相互作用的模型,对人类蛋白质相互作用进行预测.自洽检验的识别精度达到75.89%,3-fold交叉检验的敏感性和特异性分别为64.22%和64.68%.结果表明IDQD算法可以用于蛋白质相互作用的预测.     

Prediction of the β-Hairpins in Proteins Using Support Vector Machine

By using of the composite vector with increment of diversity and scoring function to express the information of sequence, a support vector machine (SVM) algorithm for predicting β-hairpin motifs is proposed. The prediction is done on a dataset of 3,088 non homologous proteins containing 6,027 β-hairpins. The overall accuracy of prediction and Matthew’s correlation coefficient are 79.9% and 0.59 for the independent testing dataset. In addition, a higher accuracy of 83.3% and Matthew’s correlation coefficient of 0.67 in the independent testing dataset are obtained on a dataset previously used by Kumar et al. (Nuclic Acid Res 33:154–159). The performance of the method is also evaluated by predicting the β-hairpins of in the CASP6 proteins, and the better results are obtained. Moreover, this method is used to predict four kinds of supersecondary structures. The overall accuracy of prediction is 64.5% for the independent testing dataset.     

用支持向量机识别 β-发夹模体

基于蛋白质序列,提出了一种新的超二级结构模体β-发夹的预测方法。利用离散增量构成的向量来表示序列信息,并将6个离散增量输入支持向量机,在六维向量空间中寻找最优超平面,将β-发夹和非β-发夹进行分类。计算结果表明,利用所设计的算法预测β-发夹,有较高的预测能力。对于训练集,5-交叉检验的预测总精度为81.24％,相关系数为0．57,β-发夹敏感性为83．06％;对于独立的检验集,预测总精度为78．34％,相关系数0．56,β-发夹敏感性为77．24％。将此预测模型应用于CASP6的63个蛋白质进行检验,得到较好结果。     

Bacterial transport in volcanic tuff cores under saturated flow conditions

An antibiotic‐resistant bacterium was tested for transport through volcanic tuff and sandstone cores. Tuff cores were representative of the geology of Rainier Mesa located on the Nevada Test Site (NTS). Rapid bacterial transport occurred in some of the tuff cores and all sandstone cores under the hydraulic heads used (5–500 cm). Hydraulic conductivity of the tuff cores ranged widely, 9.6 × 10^‐5 to 7.2 x 10^‐3 cm h^‐1. A much narrower range was observed for sandstone cores, 1.6 × 10^‐2 to 5.9 X 10^‐2 cm h^‐1, which served as experimental controls. The percentage of the initial bacterial inoculum recovered within 3 pore volumes from tuff and sandstone cores ranged from 9.4 to 54.7% and 0.20 to 2.9%, respectively. Bacterial recovery appeared to be controlled by the structure of the flow paths in rock cores and not by overall hydraulic conductivity. Saturated clay‐infiltrated and unfractured zeolitized tuff cores were impermeable to water flow, and therefore bacterial transport was not detected. Three routes of bacterial transport were discerned in permeable rock cores by comparison of the breakthrough patterns of bacteria and tracer solution (chloride ions) in cores of differing lithologies. In sandstone cores, where water flowed evenly through the matrix, bacteria were transported in a dispersed manner throughout the sandstone, whereas bacteria were transported primarily along preferred flow paths (fractures or macropores) in permeable tuff cores.