ZIB Structure Prediction Pipeline: Composing a Complex Biological Workflow Through Web Services

Genome sequencing projects are producing linear amino acid sequences, but full understanding of the biological role of these proteins will require knowledge of their structure and function. Although experimental structure determination methods are providing high-resolution structure information about a subset of the proteins, computational structure prediction methods will provide valuable information for the large fraction of sequences whose structures will not be determined experimentally. The first class of protein structure prediction methods, including threading and comparative modeling, rely on detectable similarity spanning most of the modeled sequence and at least one known structure. The second class of methods, de novo or ab initio methods, predict the structure from sequence alone, without relying on similarity at the fold level between the modeled sequence and any of the known structures. In this Viewpoint, we begin by describing the essential features of the methods, the accuracy of the models, and their application to the prediction and understanding of protein function, both for single proteins and on the scale of whole genomes. We then discuss the important role that protein structure prediction methods play in the growing worldwide effort in structural genomics.

The Macromolecular Structure Database (MSD) group (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/msd/) continues to enhance the quality and consistency of macromolecular structure data in the worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) and to work towards the integration of various bioinformatics data resources. One of the major obstacles to the improved integration of structural databases such as MSD and sequence databases like UniProt is the absence of up to date and well-maintained mapping between corresponding entries. We have worked closely with the UniProt group at the EBI to clean up the taxonomy and sequence cross-reference information in the MSD and UniProt databases. This information is vital for the reliable integration of the sequence family databases such as Pfam and Interpro with the structure-oriented databases of SCOP and CATH. This information has been made available to the eFamily group (http://www.efamily.org.uk/) and now forms the basis of the regular interchange of information between the member databases (MSD, UniProt, Pfam, Interpro, SCOP and CATH). This exchange of annotation information has enriched the structural information in the MSD database with annotation from wider sequence-oriented resources. This work was carried out under the ‘Structure Integration with Function, Taxonomy and Sequences (SIFTS)’ initiative (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/msd-srv/docs/sifts) in the MSD group.