scholarly journals LZerD Protein-Protein Docking Webserver Enhanced With de novo Structure Prediction

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Christoffer ◽  
Vijay Bharadwaj ◽  
Ryan Luu ◽  
Daisuke Kihara

Protein-protein docking is a useful tool for modeling the structures of protein complexes that have yet to be experimentally determined. Understanding the structures of protein complexes is a key component for formulating hypotheses in biophysics regarding the functional mechanisms of complexes. Protein-protein docking is an established technique for cases where the structures of the subunits have been determined. While the number of known structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank is increasing, there are still many cases where the structures of individual proteins that users want to dock are not determined yet. Here, we have integrated the AttentiveDist method for protein structure prediction into our LZerD webserver for protein-protein docking, which enables users to simply submit protein sequences and obtain full-complex atomic models, without having to supply any structure themselves. We have further extended the LZerD docking interface with a symmetrical homodimer mode. The LZerD server is available at https://lzerd.kiharalab.org/.

Author(s):  
Luciano A Abriata ◽  
Matteo Dal Peraro

Abstract Residue coevolution estimations coupled to machine learning methods are revolutionizing the ability of protein structure prediction approaches to model proteins that lack clear homologous templates in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). This has been patent in the last round of the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP), which presented several very good models for the hardest targets. Unfortunately, literature reporting on these advances often lacks digests tailored to lay end users; moreover, some of the top-ranking predictors do not provide webservers that can be used by nonexperts. How can then end users benefit from these advances and correctly interpret the predicted models? Here we review the web resources that biologists can use today to take advantage of these state-of-the-art methods in their research, including not only the best de novo modeling servers but also datasets of models precomputed by experts for structurally uncharacterized protein families. We highlight their features, advantages and pitfalls for predicting structures of proteins without clear templates. We present a broad number of applications that span from driving forward biochemical investigations that lack experimental structures to actually assisting experimental structure determination in X-ray diffraction, cryo-EM and other forms of integrative modeling. We also discuss issues that must be considered by users yet still require further developments, such as global and residue-wise model quality estimates and sources of residue coevolution other than monomeric tertiary structure.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 611-628
Author(s):  
Jad Abbass ◽  
Jean-Christophe Nebel

For two decades, Rosetta has consistently been at the forefront of protein structure prediction. While it has become a very large package comprising programs, scripts, and tools, for different types of macromolecular modelling such as ligand docking, protein-protein docking, protein design, and loop modelling, it started as the implementation of an algorithm for ab initio protein structure prediction. The term ’Rosetta’ appeared for the first time twenty years ago in the literature to describe that algorithm and its contribution to the third edition of the community wide Critical Assessment of techniques for protein Structure Prediction (CASP3). Similar to the Rosetta stone that allowed deciphering the ancient Egyptian civilisation, David Baker and his co-workers have been contributing to deciphering ’the second half of the genetic code’. Although the focus of Baker’s team has expended to de novo protein design in the past few years, Rosetta’s ‘fame’ is associated with its fragment-assembly protein structure prediction approach. Following a presentation of the main concepts underpinning its foundation, especially sequence-structure correlation and usage of fragments, we review the main stages of its developments and highlight the milestones it has achieved in terms of protein structure prediction, particularly in CASP.


Proteins are essential and are present in all life forms and determining its structure is cumbersome, laborious and time consuming. Hence, over 3-4 decades, researchers have been using computational techniques such as template and template free based protein structure prediction from its sequence. This research focuses on developing a conceptual basis for establishing an invariant fragment library which can be used for protein structure prediction. Based on 20 amino acids, fragments can be classified into lengths of 3 to 41 size. Further, they can be classified based on the identical number of amino acids present in the fragment. This encompasses theoretically the number of fragments that can exist and in no way represent the actual possible fragments that can exist in nature. Invariant fragments are ones which are rigid in structure 3-dimensionally and do not change. A formula was arrived at to determine all possible permutations that can exist for length 3 to 41 based on the 20 amino acids. 100 proteins from the Protein Data Bank were downloaded, broken into fragments of 3 to 41 resulting in a total of 6102,102 fragments using Asynchronous Distributed Processing. Then identical fragments in sequence were superimposed and Root Mean Square Deviation (RMSD) values were obtained resulting in roughly 3.2% of the original framgnets.. t-score and z-scores were obtained from which Skewness, Kurtosis and Excess Kurtosis were determined. For invariance, skewness cutoff was set at + 0.1 and using the excess kurtosis, fragments whose distribution were either leptokurtic or platykurtic and were within + 1 standard deviation of the mean value were considered as invariant i.e., if there were no outliers in the distribution and if most of the t-score or z-score values were centered around its average value. Using these cutoff values, fragments were classified and deposited into an invariant fragment library. Roughly 3,81,799 invariant fragments were obtained which is roughly 6.3% of the total number of initial fragments. This would be way less than the number of fragments that one has to either use in homology or de-novo modelling thereby reducing the design space. Further work is underway to set up the entire invariant fragment library which can then be used to predict protein structure by template-based approach.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. e0123998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saulo H. P. de Oliveira ◽  
Jiye Shi ◽  
Charlotte M. Deane

2009 ◽  
Vol 393 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Kim ◽  
Ben Blum ◽  
Philip Bradley ◽  
David Baker

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca F. Alford ◽  
Patrick J. Fleming ◽  
Karen G. Fleming ◽  
Jeffrey J. Gray

ABSTRACTProtein design is a powerful tool for elucidating mechanisms of function and engineering new therapeutics and nanotechnologies. While soluble protein design has advanced, membrane protein design remains challenging due to difficulties in modeling the lipid bilayer. In this work, we developed an implicit approach that captures the anisotropic structure, shape of water-filled pores, and nanoscale dimensions of membranes with different lipid compositions. The model improves performance in computational bench-marks against experimental targets including prediction of protein orientations in the bilayer, ΔΔG calculations, native structure dis-crimination, and native sequence recovery. When applied to de novo protein design, this approach designs sequences with an amino acid distribution near the native amino acid distribution in membrane proteins, overcoming a critical flaw in previous membrane models that were prone to generating leucine-rich designs. Further, the proteins designed in the new membrane model exhibit native-like features including interfacial aromatic side chains, hydrophobic lengths compatible with bilayer thickness, and polar pores. Our method advances high-resolution membrane protein structure prediction and design toward tackling key biological questions and engineering challenges.Significance StatementMembrane proteins participate in many life processes including transport, signaling, and catalysis. They constitute over 30% of all proteins and are targets for over 60% of pharmaceuticals. Computational design tools for membrane proteins will transform the interrogation of basic science questions such as membrane protein thermodynamics and the pipeline for engineering new therapeutics and nanotechnologies. Existing tools are either too expensive to compute or rely on manual design strategies. In this work, we developed a fast and accurate method for membrane protein design. The tool is available to the public and will accelerate the experimental design pipeline for membrane proteins.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 149-155
Author(s):  
Sandhya P.N. Dubey ◽  
N. Gopalakrishna Kini ◽  
M. Sathish Kumar ◽  
S. Balaji ◽  
M.P. Sumana Bha ◽  
...  

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