title: Image-based surface matching algorithm oriented to structural biology.
abstract: Emerging technologies for structure matching based on surface descriptions have demonstrated their effectiveness in many research fields. In particular, they can be successfully applied to in silico studies of structural biology. Protein activities, in fact, are related to the external characteristics of these macromolecules and the ability to match surfaces can be important to infer information about their possible functions and interactions. In this work, we present a surface-matching algorithm, based on encoding the outer morphology of proteins in images of local description, which allows us to establish point-to-point correlations among macromolecular surfaces using image-processing functions. Discarding methods relying on biological analysis of atomic structures and expensive computational approaches based on energetic studies, this algorithm can successfully be used for macromolecular recognition by employing local surface features. Results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can be employed both to identify surface similarities in context of macromolecular functional analysis and to screen possible protein interactions to predict pairing capability.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Biomedical Technologies, Italian National Research Council, Segrate (Milan), Italy. ivan.merelli@itb.cnr.it
authors.forename: Ivan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Merelli
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cozzi
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: D'Agostino
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Clematis
authors.forename: Luciano
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Milanesi
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D030562:Databases, Protein; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D011487:Protein Conformation; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins