6,423 research outputs found
Homology-based inference sets the bar high for protein function prediction
Background: Any method that de novo predicts protein function should do better than random. More challenging, it also ought to outperform simple homology-based inference. Methods: Here, we describe a few methods that predict protein function exclusively through homology. Together, they set the bar or lower limit for future improvements. Results and conclusions: During the development of these methods, we faced two surprises. Firstly, our most successful implementation for the baseline ranked very high at CAFA1. In fact, our best combination of homology-based methods fared only slightly worse than the top-of-the-line prediction method from the Jones group. Secondly, although the concept of homology-based inference is simple, this work revealed that the precise details of the implementation are crucial: not only did the methods span from top to bottom performers at CAFA, but also the reasons for these differences were unexpected. In this work, we also propose a new rigorous measure to compare predicted and experimental annotations. It puts more emphasis on the details of protein function than the other measures employed by CAFA and may best reflect the expectations of users. Clearly, the definition of proper goals remains one major objective for CAFA
A topological approach for protein classification
Protein function and dynamics are closely related to its sequence and
structure. However prediction of protein function and dynamics from its
sequence and structure is still a fundamental challenge in molecular biology.
Protein classification, which is typically done through measuring the
similarity be- tween proteins based on protein sequence or physical
information, serves as a crucial step toward the understanding of protein
function and dynamics. Persistent homology is a new branch of algebraic
topology that has found its success in the topological data analysis in a
variety of disciplines, including molecular biology. The present work explores
the potential of using persistent homology as an indepen- dent tool for protein
classification. To this end, we propose a molecular topological fingerprint
based support vector machine (MTF-SVM) classifier. Specifically, we construct
machine learning feature vectors solely from protein topological fingerprints,
which are topological invariants generated during the filtration process. To
validate the present MTF-SVM approach, we consider four types of problems.
First, we study protein-drug binding by using the M2 channel protein of
influenza A virus. We achieve 96% accuracy in discriminating drug bound and
unbound M2 channels. Additionally, we examine the use of MTF-SVM for the
classification of hemoglobin molecules in their relaxed and taut forms and
obtain about 80% accuracy. The identification of all alpha, all beta, and
alpha-beta protein domains is carried out in our next study using 900 proteins.
We have found a 85% success in this identifica- tion. Finally, we apply the
present technique to 55 classification tasks of protein superfamilies over 1357
samples. An average accuracy of 82% is attained. The present study establishes
computational topology as an independent and effective alternative for protein
classification
Representability of algebraic topology for biomolecules in machine learning based scoring and virtual screening
This work introduces a number of algebraic topology approaches, such as
multicomponent persistent homology, multi-level persistent homology and
electrostatic persistence for the representation, characterization, and
description of small molecules and biomolecular complexes. Multicomponent
persistent homology retains critical chemical and biological information during
the topological simplification of biomolecular geometric complexity.
Multi-level persistent homology enables a tailored topological description of
inter- and/or intra-molecular interactions of interest. Electrostatic
persistence incorporates partial charge information into topological
invariants. These topological methods are paired with Wasserstein distance to
characterize similarities between molecules and are further integrated with a
variety of machine learning algorithms, including k-nearest neighbors, ensemble
of trees, and deep convolutional neural networks, to manifest their descriptive
and predictive powers for chemical and biological problems. Extensive numerical
experiments involving more than 4,000 protein-ligand complexes from the PDBBind
database and near 100,000 ligands and decoys in the DUD database are performed
to test respectively the scoring power and the virtual screening power of the
proposed topological approaches. It is demonstrated that the present approaches
outperform the modern machine learning based methods in protein-ligand binding
affinity predictions and ligand-decoy discrimination
TopologyNet: Topology based deep convolutional neural networks for biomolecular property predictions
Although deep learning approaches have had tremendous success in image, video
and audio processing, computer vision, and speech recognition, their
applications to three-dimensional (3D) biomolecular structural data sets have
been hindered by the entangled geometric complexity and biological complexity.
We introduce topology, i.e., element specific persistent homology (ESPH), to
untangle geometric complexity and biological complexity. ESPH represents 3D
complex geometry by one-dimensional (1D) topological invariants and retains
crucial biological information via a multichannel image representation. It is
able to reveal hidden structure-function relationships in biomolecules. We
further integrate ESPH and convolutional neural networks to construct a
multichannel topological neural network (TopologyNet) for the predictions of
protein-ligand binding affinities and protein stability changes upon mutation.
To overcome the limitations to deep learning arising from small and noisy
training sets, we present a multitask topological convolutional neural network
(MT-TCNN). We demonstrate that the present TopologyNet architectures outperform
other state-of-the-art methods in the predictions of protein-ligand binding
affinities, globular protein mutation impacts, and membrane protein mutation
impacts.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 5 table
Hardware accelerated protein inference framework
Protein inference plays a vital role in the proteomics study. Two major
approaches could be used to handle the problem of protein inference; top-down
and bottom-up. This paper presents a framework for protein inference, which
uses hardware accelerated protein inference framework for handling the most
important step in a bottom-up approach, viz. peptide identification during the
assembling process. In our framework, identified peptides and their
probabilities are used to predict the most suitable reference protein cluster
for a given input amino acid sequence with the probability of identified
peptides. The framework is developed on an FPGA where hardware software
co-design techniques are used to accelerate the computationally intensive parts
of the protein inference process. In the paper we have measured, compared and
reported the time taken for the protein inference process in our framework
against a pure software implementation
- …