Applications of graph theory in protein structure identification

There is a growing interest in the identification of proteins on the proteome wide scale. Among different kinds of protein structure identification methods, graph-theoretic methods are very sharp ones. Due to their lower costs, higher effectiveness and many other advantages, they have drawn more and more researchers’ attention nowadays. Specifically, graph-theoretic methods have been widely used in homology identification, side-chain cluster identification, peptide sequencing and so on. This paper reviews several methods in solving protein structure identification problems using graph theory. We mainly introduce classical methods and mathematical models including homology modeling based on clique finding, identification of side-chain clusters in protein structures upon graph spectrum, and de novo peptide sequencing via tandem mass spectrometry using the spectrum graph model. In addition, concluding remarks and future priorities of each method are given

De novo peptide sequencing methods for tandem mass spectra

De novo peptide sequencing from MS/MS spectra has become of primary importance in proteomics. It provides essential information for studies of protein structure and function. With the availability of various MS/MS spectra, a lot of computational methods have been developed to infer peptide sequences from them. However, current de novo peptide sequencing methods still have limitations. Some major ones include a lack of suitable models reflecting MS/MS spectra, limited information extracted from MS/MS spectra, and the inefficient use of multiple spectra. This thesis addresses some of the limitations with a series of novel computational methods designed for various MS/MS spectra and their combinations. The main content of the thesis starts with a comprehensive review of recent developments in de novo peptide sequencing methods, followed by two novel methods for single spectrum sequencing problems, and then presents two paired spectra sequencing methods. The first chapter introduces relevant background information, objectives of the study, and the structure of the thesis. After that, a comprehensive review of de novo peptide sequencing methods is given. It summarizes recent developments of computational methods for various experimental spectra, compares and analyzes their advantages and disadvantages, and points out some future research directions. Having these potential research directions, the thesis next presents two novel methods designed for higher-energy collisional dissociation (HCD) spectra and electron capture dissociation (ECD) (or electron transfer dissociation (ETD)) spectra, respectively. These methods apply new spectrum graph models with multiple types of edges, integrate amino acid combination (AAC) information and peptide tags, and consider spectrum-specific information to suit different spectra. After that, multiple spectra sequencing problem is studied. A framework for de novo peptide sequencing of multiple spectra is given with applications to two different spectra pairs. One pair is spectrally complementary to each other, and the other is similar spectra with property differences. These methods include effective spectra merging criteria and parent mass correction steps, and modify the previously proposed graph models to fit the merged spectra. Experiments on several experimental MS/MS spectra datasets and datasets pairs show the advantages of the proposed methods in terms of peptide sequencing accuracy. Finally, conclusions and future work directions are given at the end of the thesis. To summarize the work in the thesis, a series of novel computational methods for de novo peptide sequencing are proposed. These methods target different types of MS/MS spectra and their combinations. Experiential results show the proposed methods are either better than competing methods that already exist, or fill gaps in the suite of currently available methods

De novo sequencing of MS/MS spectra

Proteomics is the study of proteins, their time- and location-dependent expression profiles, as well as their modifications and interactions. Mass spectrometry is useful to investigate many of the questions asked in proteomics. Database search methods are typically employed to identify proteins from complex mixtures. However, databases are not often available or, despite their availability, some sequences are not readily found therein. To overcome this problem, de novo sequencing can be used to directly assign a peptide sequence to a tandem mass spectrometry spectrum. Many algorithms have been proposed for de novo sequencing and a selection of them are detailed in this article. Although a standard accuracy measure has not been agreed upon in the field, relative algorithm performance is discussed. The current state of the de novo sequencing is assessed thereafter and, finally, examples are used to construct possible future perspectives of the field. © 2011 Expert Reviews Ltd.The Turkish Academy of Science (TÜBA

ProbPS: A new model for peak selection based on quantifying the dependence of the existence of derivative peaks on primary ion intensity

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The analysis of mass spectra suggests that the existence of derivative peaks is strongly dependent on the intensity of the primary peaks. Peak selection from tandem mass spectrum is used to filter out noise and contaminant peaks. It is widely accepted that a valid primary peak tends to have high intensity and is accompanied by derivative peaks, including isotopic peaks, neutral loss peaks, and complementary peaks. Existing models for peak selection ignore the dependence between the existence of the derivative peaks and the intensity of the primary peaks. Simple models for peak selection assume that these two attributes are independent; however, this assumption is contrary to real data and prone to error.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper, we present a statistical model to quantitatively measure the dependence of the derivative peak's existence on the primary peak's intensity. Here, we propose a statistical model, named ProbPS, to capture the dependence in a quantitative manner and describe a statistical model for peak selection. Our results show that the quantitative understanding can successfully guide the peak selection process. By comparing ProbPS with AuDeNS we demonstrate the advantages of our method in both filtering out noise peaks and in improving <it>de novo </it>identification. In addition, we present a tag identification approach based on our peak selection method. Our results, using a test data set, suggest that our tag identification method (876 correct tags in 1000 spectra) outperforms PepNovoTag (790 correct tags in 1000 spectra).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We have shown that ProbPS improves the accuracy of peak selection which further enhances the performance of de novo sequencing and tag identification. Thus, our model saves valuable computation time and improving the accuracy of the results.</p

Predicting Proteome-Early Drug Induced Cardiac Toxicity Relationships (Pro-EDICToRs) with Node Overlapping Parameters (NOPs) of a new class of Blood Mass-Spectra graphs

The 11th International Electronic Conference on Synthetic Organic Chemistry session Computational ChemistryBlood Serum Proteome-Mass Spectra (SP-MS) may allow detecting Proteome-Early Drug Induced Cardiac Toxicity Relationships (called here Pro-EDICToRs). However, due to the thousands of proteins in the SP identifying general Pro-EDICToRs patterns instead of a single protein marker may represents a more realistic alternative. In this sense, first we introduced a novel Cartesian 2D spectrum graph for SP-MS. Next, we introduced the graph node-overlapping parameters (nopk) to numerically characterize SP-MS using them as inputs to seek a Quantitative Proteome-Toxicity Relationship (QPTR) classifier for Pro-EDICToRs with accuracy higher than 80%. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on the nopk values present in the QPTR model explains with one factor (F1) the 82.7% of variance. Next, these nopk values were used to construct by the first time a Pro-EDICToRs Complex Network having nodes (samples) linked by edges (similarity between two samples). We compared the topology of two sub-networks (cardiac toxicity and control samples); finding extreme relative differences for the re-linking (P) and Zagreb (M2) indices (9.5 and 54.2 % respectively) out of 11 parameters. We also compared subnetworks with well known ideal random networks including Barabasi-Albert, Kleinberg Small World, Erdos-Renyi, and Epsstein Power Law models. Finally, we proposed Partial Order (PO) schemes of the 115 samples based on LDA-probabilities, F1-scores and/or network node degrees. PCA-CN and LDA-PCA based POs with Tanimoto’s coefficients equal or higher than 0.75 are promising for the study of Pro-EDICToRs. These results shows that simple QPTRs models based on MS graph numerical parameters are an interesting tool for proteome researchThe authors thank projects funded by the Xunta de Galicia (PXIB20304PR and BTF20302PR) and the Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo (PI061457). González-Díaz H. acknowledges tenure track research position funded by the Program Isidro Parga Pondal, Xunta de Galici

Algorithms for Glycan Structure Identification with Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Glycosylation is a frequently observed post-translational modification (PTM) of proteins. It has been estimated over half of eukaryotic proteins in nature are glycoproteins. Glycoprotein analysis plays a vital role in drug preparation. Thus, characterization of glycans that are linked to proteins has become necessary in glycoproteomics. Mass spectrometry has become an effective analytical technique for glycoproteomics analysis because of its high throughput and sensitivity. The large amount of spectral data collected in a mass spectrometry experiment makes manual interpretation impossible and requires effective computational approaches for automated analysis. Different algorithmic solutions have been proposed to address the challenges in glycoproteomics analysis based on mass spectrometry. However, new algorithms that can identify intact glycopeptides are still demanded to improve result accuracy. In this research, a glycan is represented as a rooted unordered labelled tree and we focus on developing effective algorithms to determine glycan structures from tandem mass spectra. Interpreting the tandem mass spectra of glycopeptides with a de novo sequencing method is essential to identifying novel glycan structures. Thus, we mathematically formulated the glycan de novo sequencing problem and propose a heuristic algorithm for glycan de novo sequencing from HCD tandem mass spectra of glycopeptides. Characterizing glycans from MS/MS with a de novo sequencing method requires high-quality mass spectra for accurate results. The database search method usually has the ability to obtain more reliable results since it has the assistance of glycan structural information. Thus, we propose a de novo sequencing assisted database search method, GlycoNovoDB, for mass spectra interpretation

A Method for Integrating Heterogeneous Datasets based on GO Term Similarity

This thesis presents a method for integrating heterogeneous gene/protein datasets at the functional level based on Gene Ontology term similarity. Often biologists want to integrate heterogeneous data sets obtain from different biological samples. A major challenge in this process is how to link the heterogeneous datasets. Currently, the most common approach is to link them through common reference database identifiers which tend to result in small number of matching identifiers. This is due to lack of standard accession schemes. Due to this problem, biologists may not recognize the underlying biological phenomena revealed by a combination of the data but by each data set individually. We discuss an approach for integrating heterogeneous datasets by computing the similarity among them based on the similarity of their GO annotations. Then we group the genes and/or proteins with similar annotations by applying a hierarchical clustering algorithm. The results demonstrate a more comprehensive understanding of the biological processes involved

Computational methods for small molecules

Metabolism is the system of chemical reactions sustaining life in the cells of living organisms. It is responsible for cellular processes that break down nutrients for energy and produce building blocks for necessary molecules. The study of metabolism is vital to many disciplines in medicine and pharmacy. Chemical reactions operate on small molecules called metabolites, which form the core of metabolism. In this thesis we propose efficient computational methods for small molecules in metabolic applications. In this thesis we discuss four distinctive studies covering two major themes: the atom-level description of biochemical reactions, and analysis of tandem mass spectrometric measurements of metabolites. In the first part we study atom-level descriptions of organic reactions. We begin by proposing an optimal algorithm for determining the atom-to-atom correspondences between the reactant and product metabolites of organic reactions. In addition, we introduce a graph edit distance based cost as the mathematical formalism to determine optimality of atom mappings. We continue by proposing a compact single-graph representation of reactions using the atom mappings. We investigate the utility of the new representation in a reaction function classification task, where a descriptive category of the reaction's function is predicted. To facilitate the prediction, we introduce the first feasible path-based graph kernel, which describes the reactions as path sequences to high classification accuracy. In the second part we turn our focus on analysing tandem mass spectrometric measurements of metabolites. In a tandem mass spectrometer, an input molecule structure is fragmented into substructures or fragments, whose masses are observed. We begin by studying the fragment identification problem. A combinatorial algorithm is presented to enumerate candidate substructures based on the given masses. We also demonstrate the usefulness of utilising approximated bond energies as a cost function to rank the candidate structures according to their chemical feasibility. We propose fragmentation tree models to describe the dependencies between fragments for higher identification accuracy. We continue by studying a closely related problem where an unknown metabolite is elucidated based on its tandem mass spectrometric fragment signals. This metabolite identification task is an important problem in metabolomics, underpinning the subsequent modelling and analysis efforts. We propose an automatic machine learning framework to predict a set of structural properties of the unknown metabolite. The properties are turned into candidate structures by a novel statistical model. We introduce the first mass spectral kernels and explore three feature classes to facilitate the prediction. The kernels introduce support for high-accuracy mass spectrometric measurements for enhanced predictive accuracy.Tässä väitöskirjassa esitetään tehokkaita laskennallisia menetelmiä pienille molekyyleille aineenvaihduntasovelluksissa. Aineenvaihdunta on kemiallisten reaktioiden järjestelmä, joka ylläpitää elämää solutasolla. Aineenvaihduntaprosessit hajottavat ravinteita energiaksi ja rakennusaineiksi soluille tarpeellisten molekyylien valmistamiseen. Kemiallisten reaktioiden muokkaamia pieniä molekyylejä kutsutaan metaboliiteiksi. Tämä väitöskirja sisältää neljä itsenäistä tutkimusta, jotka jakautuvat teemallisesti biokemiallisten reaktioiden atomitason kuvaamiseen ja metaboliittien massaspektrometriamittausten analysointiin. Väitöskirjan ensimmäisessä osassa käsitellään biokemiallisten reaktioiden atomitason kuvauksia. Väitöskirjassa esitellään optimaalinen algoritmi reaktioiden lähtö- ja tuoteaineiden välisten atomikuvausten määrittämiseen. Optimaalisuus määrittyy verkkojen editointietäisyyteen perustuvalla kustannusfunktiolla. Optimaalinen atomikuvaus mahdollistaa reaktion kuvaamisen yksikäsitteisesti yhdellä verkolla. Uutta reaktiokuvausta hyödynnetään reaktion funktion ennustustehtävässä, jossa pyritään määrittämään reaktiota sanallisesti kuvaava kategoria automaattisesti. Väitöskirjassa esitetään polku-perustainen verkkokerneli, joka kuvaa reaktiot atomien polkusekvensseinä verrattuna aiempiin kulkusekvensseihin saavuttaen paremman ennustustarkkuuden. Väitöskirjan toisessa osassa analysoidaan metaboliittien tandem-massaspektrometriamittauksia. Tandem-massaspektrometri hajottaa analysoitavan syötemolekyylin fragmenteiksi ja mittaa niiden massa-varaus suhteet. Väitöskirjassa esitetään perusteellinen kombinatorinen algoritmi fragmenttien tunnistamiseen. Menetelmän kustannusfunktio perustuu fragmenttien sidosenergioiden vertailuun. Lopuksi väitöskirjassa esitetään fragmentaatiopuut, joiden avulla voidaan mallintaa fragmenttien välisiä suhteita ja saavuttaa parempi tunnistustarkkuus. Fragmenttien tunnistuksen ohella voidaan tunnistaa myös analysoitavia metaboliitteja. Ongelma on merkittävä ja edellytys aineenvaihdunnun analyyseille. Väitöskirjassa esitetään koneoppimismenetelmä, joka ennustaa tuntemattoman metaboliitin rakennetta kuvaavia piirteitä ja muodostaa niiden perusteella rakenne-ennusteita tilastollisesti. Menetelmä esittelee ensimmäiset erityisesti massaspektrometriadataan soveltuvat kernel-funktiot ja saavuttaa hyvän ennustustarkkuuden

A Computational Framework for Heparan Sulfate Sequencing Using High-resolution Tandem Mass Spectra

Heparan sulfate (HS) is a linear polysaccharide expressed on cell surfaces, in extracellular matrices and cellular granules in metazoan cells. Through non-covalent binding to growth factors, morphogens, chemokines, and other protein families, HS is involved in all multicellular physiological activities. Its biological activities depend on the fine structures of its protein-binding domains, the determination of which remains a daunting task. Methods have advanced to the point that mass spectra with information-rich product ions may be produced on purified HS saccharides. However, the interpretation of these complex product ion patterns has emerged as the bottleneck to the dissemination of these HS sequencing methods. To solve this problem, we designed HS-SEQ, the first comprehensive algorithm for HS de novo sequencing using high-resolution tandem mass spectra. We tested HS-SEQ using negative electron transfer dissociation (NETD) tandem mass spectra generated from a set of pure synthetic saccharide standards with diverse sulfation patterns. The results showed that HS-SEQ rapidly and accurately determined the correct HS structures from large candidate pools