In the postgenomic age, rapid growth in the number of sequence-known proteins has been accompanied by much slower growth in the number of structure-known proteins (as a result of experimental limitations), and a widening gap between the two is evident. Because protein function is linked to protein structure, successful prediction of protein structure is of significant importance in protein function identification. Foreknowledge of protein structural class can help improve protein structure prediction with significant medical and pharmaceutical implications. Thus, a fast, suitable, reliable, and reasonable computational method for protein structural class prediction has become pivotal in bioinformatics. Here, we review recent efforts in protein structural class prediction from protein sequence, with particular attention paid to new feature descriptors, which extract information from protein sequence, and the use of machine learning algorithms in both feature selection and the construction of new classification models. These new feature descriptors include amino acid composition, sequence order, physicochemical properties, multiprofile Bayes, and secondary structure-based features. Machine learning methods, such as artificial neural networks (ANNs), support vector machine (SVM), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), random forest, deep learning, and examples of their application are discussed in detail. We also present our view on possible future directions, challenges, and opportunities for the applications of machine learning algorithms for prediction of protein structural classes.
Recent Advances in the Prediction of Protein Structural Classes: Feature Descriptors and Machine Learning Algorithms
