Methods for Protein Structure Prediction
Homology Modeling &
Fold Recognition
Next time: Ab Initio Prediction
7.91 Amy Keating
Review - Homology Modeling
? Identify a protein with similar sequence for which a
structure has been solved (the template)
? Align the target sequence with the template
? Use the alignment to build an approximate structure for
the target
? Fill in any missing pieces
? Fine-tune the structure
? Evaluate success
An excellent review:
Marti-Renom et al. Annu. Rev. Biophys. Biomol. Struct. 29 (2000): 291-325.
these numbers
are from an
entirely
automated
process - can do
better with
manual
intervention
Marti-Renom et al. Annu. Rev. Biophys. Biomol. Struct. 29 (2000): 291-325.
Courtesy of Annual Reviews Nonprofit Publisher of the Annual Review of TM Series. Used with permission.
Homology Modeling on a Genomic Scale
? Requires automation
– Can’t choose templates or fine-tune the alignment by
hand!
? MODBASE and 3D-CRUNCH
http://alto.compbio.ucsf.edu/modbase-cgi/index.cgi
http://www.expasy.ch/swissmod/SM_3DCrunch.html
? Automatic assessment is critical - how reliable is the
model?
One approach to assessment
Want to compute the probability that a prediction is good, based on
properties of the model
For a given score of the model (e.g. Q-score - more on this later), use a
training set of known examples, together with Bayes’ rule
P(A|B) = P(A ^ B)/P(B) = P(A)P(B|A)/{P(A)P(B|A) + P(!A)P(B|!A)}
Assume probability of a good vs. a bad model is the same,
i.e. P(A) = P(!A) where A = good model; !A = bad model; B = Q-score
P(good|Q-score) = P(Q-score|good)/{P(Q-score|good) + P(Q-score|bad)}
Prob.
Q-score
good models
bad models
Sanchez, R, and A Sali. "Large-scale Protein Structure Modeling of The Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Genome."
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95, no. 23 (10 November 1998): 13597-602.
MODBASE
http://alto.compbio.ucsf.edu/modbase-cgi/index.cgi
? 733,239 sequences & 7,120 non-redundant structures
? Fold Assignments (by PSI-BLAST)
? Reliable fold assignments: 827,007 for 413,311 sequences
? Average folds per sequence: 2.0
? Average length of queries: 511 amino acids
?Average length of folds: 229 amino acids
? Comparative Models (by MODELLER)
? Reliable models 547,473
? Sequences with reliable models: 327,393 (59%)
? Structures used as templates: 6.366 (89%)
For a reliable fold assignment, PSI-BLAST E value < 0.0001
OR a reliable model.
For a reliable model, 30% of Cα atoms superpose within 3.5? of their
correct positions
Example
You’ve just cloned a new gene from Pombe
- look it up in ModBase
? putative galactosyltransferase associated protein kinase
(GenBank accession # 3006192)
Pieper, Ursula, Narayanan Eswar, Ashley C. Stuart, Valentin A. Ilyin, and Andrej Sali. "MODBASE, A Database
of Annotated Comparative Protein Structure Models." Nucl. Acids Res. 30 (2002): 255-259.
http://alto.compbio.ucsf.edu/modbase-cgi/index.cgi
Model of new POMBE gene
TEMPLATE = 1HCL
TARGET
PDB ID: 1HCL
Schulze-Gahmen, U., J. Brandsen, H. D. Jones, D. O. Morgan, L. Meijer, J. Vesely, and S. H. Kim. "Multiple Modes of
Ligand Recognition: Crystal Structures of Cyclin-dependent Protein Kinase 2 in Complex with ATP and Two Inhibitors,
Olomoucine and Isopentenyladenine." Proteins 22 (1995): 378.
The Protein Data Bank (PDB - http://www.pdb.org/) is the single worldwide repository for the processing and distribution of 3-D biological macromolecular structure data.
Berman, H. M., J. Westbrook, Z. Feng, G. Gilliland, T. N. Bhat, H. Weissig, I. N. Shindyalov, and P. E. Bourne. The Protein Data Bank. Nucleic Acids Research 28
(2000): 235-242.
(PDB Advisory Notice on using materials available in the archive: http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/advisory.html)
The CASP contests
? Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction
? Began in 1994 (CASP1)
? Held every two years
? Experimentalists submit target sequences
? Predictors submit and rank blind predictions
? Assessors develop criteria to judge success
? A meeting is held to discuss the results and a journal issue
(of PROTEINS) is published to describe them
? In theory, this identifies the problem areas and people go
back and work on them for the next round of CASP
CASP4 Target T0111
1. Protein Name
Example of a CASP target
enolase
2. Organism Name
Escherichia coli
3. Number of amino acids (approx)
431
4. Accession number
P08324
5. Sequence Database
Swiss-prot
6. Amino acid sequence
SKIVKIIGREIIDSRGNPTVEAEVHLEGGFVGMAAAPSGASTGSREALEL
RDGDKSRFLGKGVTKAVAAVNGPIAQALIGKDAKDQAGIDKIMIDLDGTE
NKSKFGANAILAVSLANAKAAAAAKGMPLYEHIAELNGTPGKYSMPVPMM
NIINGGEHADNNVDIQEFMIQPVGAKTVKEAIRMGSEVFHHLAKVLKAKG
MNTAVGDEGGYAPNLGSNAEALAVIAEAVKAAGYELGKDITLAMDCAASE
FYKDGKYVLAGEGNKAFTSEEFTHFLEELTKQYPIVSIEDGLDESDWDGF
AYQTKVLGDKIQLVGDDLFVTNTKILKEGIEKGIANSILIKFNQIGSLTE
TLAAIKMAKDAGYTAVISHRSGETEDATIADLAVGTAAGQIKTGSMSRSD
RVAKYNQLIRIEEALGEKAPYNGRKEIKGQA
7. Additional Information
oligomerization state: dimer in the presence of magnesium by dynamic light scattering
and small angle x-ray solution scattering and
in the recently solved crystal structure.
8. Homologous Sequence of known structure
yes
9. Current state of the experimental work
Structure solved by molecular replacement. Currently,
the refinement to 2.5 A resolution is near completion.
Current Rfree 27 % ; R 22 %
BLAST target T0111 against the PDB
>gi|1311141|pdb|1PDZ| Mol_id: 1; Molecule: Enolase; Chain: Null; Synonym:
2-Phospho-D-Glycerate Dehydratase; Ec: 4.2.1.11;
Heterogen: Phosphoglycolate; Heterogen: Mn 2+
gi|1311142|pdb|1PDY| Mol_id: 1; Molecule: Enolase; Chain: Null; Synonym:
2-Phospho-D-Glycerate Dehydratase; Ec: 4.2.1.11
Length = 434
Score = 384 bits (987), Expect = e-107
Identities = 220/432 (50%), Positives = 280/432 (63%), Gaps = 16/432 (3%)
Query: 3 IVKIIGREIIDSRGNPTVEAEVHLEGGFVGMAAAPSGASTGSREALELRDGDKSRFLGKG 62
I K+ R I DSRGNPTVE +++ G AA PSGASTG EALE+RDGDKS++ GK
Sbjct: 3 ITKVFARTIFDSRGNPTVEVDLYTSKGLF-RAAVPSGASTGVHEALEMRDGDKSKYHGKS 61
Query: 63 VTKAVAAVNGPIAQALI--GKDAKDQAGIDKIMIDLDGTENKSKFGANAILAVSLANAKA 120
V AV VN I +I G Q D+ M LDGTENKS GANAIL VSLA KA
Sbjct: 62 VFNAVKNVNDVIVPEIIKSGLKVTQQKECDEFMCKLDGTENKSSLGANAILGVSLAICKA 121
Query: 121 AAAAKGMPLYEHIAELNGTPGKYSMPVPMMNIINGGEHADNNVDIQEFMIQPVGAKTVKE 180
AA G+PLY HIA L + +PVP N+INGG HA N + +QEFMI P GA + E
Sbjct: 122 GAAELGIPLYRHIANL-ANYDEVILPVPAFNVINGGSHAGNKLAMQEFMILPTGATSFTE 180
Query: 181 AIRMGSEVFHHLAKVLKAK-GMN-TAVGDEGGYAPNLGSNAEALAVIAEAVKAAGYELGK 238
A+RMG+EV+HHL V+KA+ G++ TAVGDEGG+APN+ +N +AL +I EA+K AGY GK
Sbjct: 181 AMRMGTEVYHHLKAVIKARFGLDATAVGDEGGFAPNILNNKDALDLIQEAIKKAGYT-GK 239
etc…
Best prediction for T0111 at CASP4
superimposed with the real structure
For a description of results from CASP 4 homology modeling, see…
Tramontano, A, R Leplae, and V Morea. "Analysis and Assessment of Comparative Modeling Predictions in
CASP4." Proteins Suppl 5 (2001): 22-38.
Progress in Comparative Modeling
Methods have not advanced significantly from CASP1 to CASP5
More template structures are available
More sequences are available to help alignment
More remotely related sequences can be detected using
PSI-BLAST
No new good solutions to the alignment OR refinement problem
The fold recognition/threading approach to
protein structure prediction
OBSERVATION: there appear to be a limited number of
protein folds (~1,000?)
Instead of having to predict protein structure “from
scratch”, maybe we can just pick the correct answer out
of a finite list
This can be done using sequence-based techniques, or by
“threading” the sequence onto different templates in
turn, and evaluating how good a match each one is
Fold recognition or threading
Target = SHPALTQLRALRYCKEIPALDPQLLDWLLLEDSMTKRFEQQ…
Library of possible folds
(these have known sequences AND structures):
Sequence-structure alignment
Target = SHPALTQLRALRYCKEIPALDPQLLDWLLLEDSMTKRFEQQ…
= t
1
t
2
t
3
t
4
t
5
…t
n
C
Sequence for known fold = s
1
s
2
s
3
s
4
s
5
…s
n
Positions for known fold = p
1
p
2
p
3
p
4
p
5
…p
n
N
How do you align the target
sequence to the structure?
S H P A L T Q L…
Linking the sequence to structural properties
by 3D-1D comparison
? Describe the structure by a sequence of terms representing
the structural environment of each residue
area buried
f
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
p
o
l
a
r
E
–How buried it is
P
1
B
–Polar/non-polar nature of the environment
–Local secondary structure
1
6 x 3 environment classes
P
2
B
3
B
2
Bowie & Eisenberg, Science (1991) 253, 164-170
Different amino acids prefer different
environments
? Quantify preference of each amino acid type for each
environment using statistical preferences (log odds
score)
score
ij
= ln
?
?
?
P( j _in _ environment _ i
?
?
?
? P( j_ in _ any _ environment ?
environment
Trp Phe Tyr
…
class
B1α 1.00 1.32 0.18
…
B1β 1.17 0.85 0.07
…
…
Make a scoring matrix = 3D profile
fold
position
environ.
class
Trp Phe Tyr … gap
1 B1b 1.17 0.85 0.07 … 200
2 E loop -2.14 -1.90 -0.94 … 2
and use it to align the sequence to the environment
string using dynamic programming
target seque
n
ce
p
1
p
2
p
3
p
4
p
5
p
6
p
7
environment class
t
1
. . .
t
2
t
3
t
4
…
Fold recognition by 3D-1D
? Compare the target sequence alignment to the template
against a large number of other possible sequences
score?< score >
Z =
score
σ
? Z-scores > 7 represent a good match
Improvements to 3D-1D scoring
? Better to use more classes - this is possible now that we have a
lot more structural data
? Incorporate predicted properties of the target (i.e. 2° structure)
? H3P2 uses 5 scoring dimensions
– 3 for the fold
? 7 residue classes
? 3 secondary structures
? 2 burial groups
– 2 for the sequence
? 7 residues classes
? Predicted secondary structure
? 7x3x2x7x3 = 882 different elements in the scoring matrix
? Derive values for the matrix from 119 structurally similar pairs
with < 30% sequence identity
H3P2 method: Rice & Eisenberg J. Mol. Bio. (1997) 267, 1026
Fold recognition by 3D-1D alignment
Advantages
Disadvantages
Fold recognition by 3D-1D alignment
Advantages
Disadvantage
-fast O(mn)
- incorporates structural
information
- reasonable performance
- assumes independence
of positions
-assumes
conservation of environment
Useful both for fold recognition and for structure
assessment (e.g. of predicted or experimental structures)
Incorporating position-dependence
? Score based on a pair-wise contact potential
Score =
∑∑
score(i, j)
i j>i
score(i, j) = f( p
i
, p
j
,t ,t )
r
i
r
j
t
r
i
is the amino acid from the target sequence that is mapped
to structure position i
N
C
Knowledge-based contact potentials
? Use observed frequencies in the pdb to compute scores
Example
Define a contact as occurring if 2 residues are < 6 ? apart (Cα-Cα distance)
?
P(i, j | contact )
?
score(i, j) =?ln? ?
?
normalization
?
Normalization based on the expected rate of seeing i and j
in contact, given no interaction between the two.
Knowledge-based threading potentials
? Some statistical potentials include a distance-
dependence
?
score( aa
i
,aa
j
, r
ij
,d
ij
) =?ln
?
?
?
f (aa
i
,aa
j
,r
ij
,d
ij
)
?
?
f(r
ij
,d
ij
)
?
?
At d
ij
= 4 compare potentials for
potential
density
Ala-Val
Ala-Pro
no a-helices
good a-helices
Separation (?)
Separation (?)
Sippl J. Mol. Bio. (1990) 213, 859; Jones et al. Nature (1992) 358, 86
Pros and cons of contact potentials
Pros and cons of contact potentials
? Fast to compute
? Not sensitive to details of structure
? Can use even for low-resolution experimental structures
? Don’t require accurate description of physics
? Have proven to be quite sensitive to quality of structure
? Don’t represent physical potentials well
? Tend to capture mostly H/P patterning effects
? Artifacts: +/+, +/- and -/- are similarly good at
distances > 4? since they are often all found on the
surface
Using contact potentials for threading or structure
evaluation
Sippl defined a “polyprotein” of 230 proteins of known structure
fused together with reasonable geometry
Slide the target sequence along the polyprotein and compute a
Z-score; normalize somehow for the length
score?< score >
Z =
score
σ
This is the Q-score used by ModBase to compute model reliability.
It is independent of the scoring functions used to build the models.
Problem with using contact potentials for threading
? The contacts depend on the alignment
? The alignment depends on the contacts
To calculate the score for putting a residue in a certain position,
you need to know what residues are in other positions. These
aren’t yet determined!
Performing an alignment using a pairwise scoring function while
allowing variable-length gaps is an NP-hard problem - it can’t
be solved in polynomial time
What to do?
? Put limits on gap lengths and positions (e.g. don’t allow
gaps in core secondary structure elements)
? Use heuristics
Example: in the “frozen” approximation you first use
the template sequence to compute the scores at
each position
In subsequent iterative rounds you use the residue
that was there in the last round of alignment
new
A
L
E
P
R
M
K
E
S
A
A
gap
E
S
K
template
structure sequence
Godzik et al. J. Mol. Bio. (1992) 227, 227-238
Fold recognition performance - CASP4
?Two tasks
– Find the correct fold
– Align the target to the template
? Difficulty is correlated with how similar the best
template is to the target and how similar the
target sequence is to a template sequence
? For the best groups, they usually recognize the correct
fold (or something close)
? For the worst groups performance is terrible (worse
than the performance of automated servers)
? For all groups, alignment is A HUGE PROBLEM!!
Sippl et al. PROTEINS (2001) Suppl. 5, 55-67
Fold recognition performance
CASP4
VERY POOR
GOOD
(but only 9% residues
correctly aligned)
EXCELLENT
(46% residues
correctly aligned)
Please see
Sippl, MJ, P Lackner, FS Domingues, A Prlic, R Malik, A Andreeva, and M Wiederstein. "Assessment
of The CASP4 Fold Recognition Category." Proteins
Suppl 5 ( 2001):
55-67.
Fold recognition at CASP4
Scale:
1 = found somewhat related fold
2 = found right fold
3 = right fold, poor alignment
4 = SUPER! (still, alignment accuracy ~40%)
Average performance over targets:
Homolog analog new fold
(sim. struct. & funct. in pdb) (sim. struct in pdb) (part of struct in pdb)
3.7 2.6 1.7
2.5 0.8 0.9
First line: “virtual predictor” averages best score from any group
Second line: average for best group
Sippl et al., PROTEINS (2001) 5, 55-67
BEST TEMPLATE
12.7% seq ID
TARGET
BEST PREDICTION
Please see
Kinch, LN, JO Wrabl, SS Krishna, I Majumdar, RI Sadreyev, Y Qi, J Pei, H Cheng, and NV Grishin. "CASP5
Assessment of Fold Recognition Target Predictions." Proteins 53, Suppl 6 (2003): 395-409.
Assessment criteria at CASP
Complicated area of research - makes it hard to follow
progress in the field as the criteria keep changing
Recent consensus that GDT-TS is a good measure
GDT-TS = 1/4(N1 + N2 + N3 + N4)
N1 = max # residues alignable to w/in 1 ? rms
N2 = 2 ?
N3 = 4 ?
N4 = 8 ?
Please see
Venclovas, C, A Zemla, K Fidelis, and J Moult. "Assessment of Progress over The CASP Experiments."
Proteins 53, Suppl 6 (2003): 585-95.
Target Difficulty
Fold recognition at CASP5
Fold recognition performance in CASP5 improved primarily because
of the use of “metaservers”
Metaservers collect predictions from other methods and combine
them in different ways (e.g. using neural networks)
Some metaservers:
3D SHOTGUN
PCONS
Fold recognition on a genome-wide scale
? Want to annotate various proteomes for structure and
function
? The threading methods are too slow and require too
much human intervention for genome-wide applications
? Sequence-based methods have gotten very good
? Adding structural information helps in detecting remote
homologies
Programs for genome-wide fold recognition
? GenThreader http://bioinf.cs.ucl.ac.uk/psipred
– Build a structure-based sequence alignment from all the
fold templates
– Align the target to the profile (sequence alignment, like
PSI-BLAST)
– Score the alignment using a threading potential
?
E(aa
i
,aa ,d
i
) =?ln
?
?
f(aa
i
,aa
j
,r
ij
,d
ij
)
?
E
environ
(a
i
) =?ln(
f
ai
(burial )
)j
?
?
f (r
ij
, d
ij
)
?
?
f(burial )
– Get out several measures of success:
? Alignment score, alignment length, target length, template
length, pairwise threading score, environment threading score
– Feed these to a neural network to get a single indicator of
the quality of the model
Performance of GenThreader
? Benchmark on 68 protein pairs with < 18.9% sequence
identity from FSSP (remember DALI…)
? 73.5% of matches made correctly
– Best sequence-based methods in 1999 got 63%
? Low false positive rate - good indication of confidence
? 46.2% of residues correctly aligned when fold was correct
? Mycoplasma genitalium genome (1999)
– Provided some annotation for 46% of proteins in the
genome
(30% of amino acids)
Jones, David T. "GenTHREADER: An Efficient and Reliable Protein Fold Recognition Method for Genomic Sequences1."
Journal of Molecular Biology 287, no. 4 (9 April 1999): 797-815.