Residue contact-count potentials are as effective as residue-residue contact-type potentials for ranking protein decoys

Background  

For over 30 years potentials of mean force have been used to evaluate the relative energy of protein structures. The most commonly used potentials define the energy of residue-residue interactions and are derived from the empirical analysis of the known protein structures. However, single-body residue 'environment' potentials, although widely used in protein structure analysis, have not been rigorously compared to these classical two-body residue-residue interaction potentials. Here we do not try to combine the two different types of residue interaction potential, but rather to assess their independent contribution to scoring protein structures.