Incorporating homologues into sequence embeddings for protein analysis.
Statistical and learning techniques are becoming increasingly popular for different tasks in bioinformatics. Many of the most powerful statistical and learning techniques are applicable to points in a Euclidean space but not directly applicable to discrete sequences such as protein sequences. One way to apply these techniques to protein sequences is to embed the sequences into a Euclidean space and then apply these techniques to the embedded points. In this work we introduce a biologically motivated sequence embedding, the homology kernel, which takes into account intuitions from local alignment, sequence homology, and predicted secondary structure. This embedding allows us to directly apply learning techniques to protein sequences. We apply the homology kernel in several ways. We demonstrate how the homology kernel can be used for protein family classification and outperforms state-of-the-art methods for remote homology detection. We show that the homology kernel can be used for secondary structure prediction and is competitive with popular secondary structure prediction methods. Finally, we show how the homology kernel can be used to incorporate information from homologous sequences in local sequence alignment.
Eskin
Eleazar
E
Department of Computer Science, Department of Human Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. eeskin@cs.ucla.edu
Snir
Sagi
S
D000465:Algorithms; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D019295:Computational Biology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D030562:Databases, Protein; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D016415:Sequence Alignment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012984:Software
D011506:Proteins