RESEARCH ARTICLE
Protein Domain Boundary Predictions: A Structural Biology Perspective
Svetlana Kirillovaa, Suresh Kumara, Oliviero Carugo*, a, b
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 3
First Page: 1
Last Page: 8
Publisher ID: TOBIOCJ-3-1
DOI: 10.2174/1874091X00903010001
Article History:
Received Date: 6/11/2008Revision Received Date: 27/11/2008
Acceptance Date: 29/11/2008
Electronic publication date: 21/1/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
One of the important fields to apply computational tools for domain boundaries prediction is structural biology. They can be used to design protein constructs that must be expressed in a stable and functional form and must produce diffraction-quality crystals. However, prediction of protein domain boundaries on the basis of amino acid sequences is still very problematical. In present study the performance of several computational approaches are compared. It is observed that the statistical significance of most of the predictions is rather poor. Nevertheless, when the right number of domains is correctly predicted, domain boundaries are predicted within very few residues from their real location. It can be concluded that prediction methods cannot be used yet as routine tools in structural biology, though some of them are rather promising.
