General overview on structure prediction of twilight-zone proteins.
Protein structure prediction from amino acid sequence has been one of the most challenging aspects in computational structural biology despite significant progress in recent years showed by critical assessment of protein structure prediction (CASP) experiments. When experimentally determined structures are unavailable, the predictive structures may serve as starting points to study a protein. If the target protein consists of homologous region, high-resolution (typically <1.5 Å) model can be built via comparative modelling. However, when confronted with low sequence similarity of the target protein (also known as twilight-zone protein, sequence identity with available templates is less than 30%), the protein structure prediction has to be initiated from scratch. Traditionally, twilight-zone proteins can be predicted via threading or ab initio method. Based on the current trend, combination of different methods brings an improved success in the prediction of twilight-zone proteins. In this mini review, the methods, progresses and challenges for the prediction of twilight-zone proteins were discussed.
Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Minden, Penang, Malaysia. kbyin89@gmail.com.
Bee Yin
BY
Khor
Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Minden, Penang, Malaysia. geejun@usm.my.
Gee Jun
GJ
Tye
Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Minden, Penang, Malaysia. theamsoon@usm.my.
Theam Soon
TS
Lim
Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Minden, Penang, Malaysia. yeesiew@usm.my.
Yee Siew
YS
Choong
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein
D011506:Proteins