FunFam protein families improve residue level molecular function prediction.

TitleFunFam protein families improve residue level molecular function prediction.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2019
AuthorsScheibenreif, L, Littmann, M, Orengo, C, Rost, B
JournalBMC Bioinformatics
Volume20
Issue1
Pagination400
Date Published2019 Jul 18
ISSN1471-2105
Abstract

BACKGROUND: The CATH database provides a hierarchical classification of protein domain structures including a sub-classification of superfamilies into functional families (FunFams). We analyzed the similarity of binding site annotations in these FunFams and incorporated FunFams into the prediction of protein binding residues.

RESULTS: FunFam members agreed, on average, in 36.9 ± 0.6% of their binding residue annotations. This constituted a 6.7-fold increase over randomly grouped proteins and a 1.2-fold increase (1.1-fold on the same dataset) over proteins with the same enzymatic function (identical Enzyme Commission, EC, number). Mapping de novo binding residue prediction methods (BindPredict-CCS, BindPredict-CC) onto FunFam resulted in consensus predictions for those residues that were aligned and predicted alike (binding/non-binding) within a FunFam. This simple consensus increased the F1-score (for binding) 1.5-fold over the original prediction method. Variation of the threshold for how many proteins in the consensus prediction had to agree provided a convenient control of accuracy/precision and coverage/recall, e.g. reaching a precision as high as 60.8 ± 0.4% for a stringent threshold.

CONCLUSIONS: The FunFams outperformed even the carefully curated EC numbers in terms of agreement of binding site residues. Additionally, we assume that our proof-of-principle through the prediction of protein binding residues will be relevant for many other solutions profiting from FunFams to infer functional information at the residue level.

DOI10.1186/s12859-019-2988-x
Alternate JournalBMC Bioinformatics
PubMed ID31319797
PubMed Central IDPMC6639920