title: Application of a simple likelihood ratio approximant to protein sequence classification.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Likelihood ratio approximants (LRA) have been widely used for model comparison in statistics. The present study was undertaken in order to explore their utility as a scoring (ranking) function in the classification of protein sequences.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We used a simple LRA-based on the maximal similarity (or minimal distance) scores of the two top ranking sequence classes. The scoring methods (Smith-Waterman, BLAST, local alignment kernel and compression based distances) were compared on datasets designed to test sequence similarities between proteins distantly related in terms of structure or evolution. It was found that LRA-based scoring can significantly outperform simple scoring methods.
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Padriciano 99, I-34012 Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: László
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kaján
authors.forename: Attila
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kertész-Farkas
authors.forename: Dino
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Franklin
authors.forename: Neli
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ivanova
authors.forename: András
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kocsor
authors.forename: Sándor
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pongor
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D003198:Computer Simulation; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D016415:Sequence Alignment / Q000379:methods*; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein / Q000379:methods*; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins