title: CONS-COCOMAPS: a novel tool to measure and visualize the conservation of inter-residue contacts in multiple docking solutions.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The development of accurate protein-protein docking programs is making this kind of simulations an effective tool to predict the 3D structure and the surface of interaction between the molecular partners in macromolecular complexes. However, correctly scoring multiple docking solutions is still an open problem. As a consequence, the accurate and tedious screening of many docking models is usually required in the analysis step.
  
  
  METHODS
  All the programs under CONS-COCOMAPS have been written in python, taking advantage of python libraries such as SciPy and Matplotlib. CONS-COCOMAPS is freely available as a web tool at the URL:http://www.molnac.unisa.it/BioTools/conscocomaps/.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Here we presented CONS-COCOMAPS, a novel tool to easily measure and visualize the consensus in multiple docking solutions. CONS-COCOMAPS uses the conservation of inter-residue contacts as an estimate of the similarity between different docking solutions. To visualize the conservation, CONS-COCOMAPS uses intermolecular contact maps.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The application of CONS-COCOMAPS to test-cases taken from recent CAPRI rounds has shown that it is very efficient in highlighting even a very weak consensus that often is biologically meaningful.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Sciences, University Parthenope of Naples, Centro Direzionale Isola C4, Naples, 80143, Italy.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vangone
authors.forename: Romina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Oliva
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cavallo
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D002462:Cell Membrane / Q000378:metabolism; D020407:Internet; D008958:Models, Molecular; D011485:Protein Binding; D060066:Protein Interaction Maps; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D012313:RNA / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins; D012313:RNA