Grammar Model Based on Lexical Substring Extraction for RNA Secondary Structure Prediction

[Objective] To examine the grammar model based on lexical substring exac- tion for RNA secondary structure prediction. [Method] By introducing cloud model into stochastic grammar model, a machine learning algorithm suitable for the lexicalized stochastic grammar model was proposed. The word grid mode was used to extract and divide RNA sequence to acquire lexical substring, and the cloud classifier was used to search the maximum probability of each lemma which was marked as a certain sec- ondary structure type. Then, the lemma information was introduced into the training stochastic grammar process as prior information, realizing the prediction on the sec- ondary structure of RNA, and the method was tested by experiment. [Result] The experimental results showed that the prediction accuracy and searching speed of stochastic grammar cloud model were significantly improved from the prediction with simple stochastic grammar. [Conclusion] This study laid the foundation for the wide application of stochastic grammar model for RNA secondary structure prediction.

Mem Brain: An Easy-to-Use Online Webserver for Transmembrane Protein Structure Prediction

Membrane proteins are an important kind of proteins embedded in the membranes of cells and play crucial roles in living organisms, such as ion channels,transporters, receptors. Because it is difficult to determinate the membrane protein's structure by wet-lab experiments,accurate and fast amino acid sequence-based computational methods are highly desired. In this paper, we report an online prediction tool called Mem Brain, whose input is the amino acid sequence. Mem Brain consists of specialized modules for predicting transmembrane helices, residue–residue contacts and relative accessible surface area of a-helical membrane proteins. Mem Brain achieves aprediction accuracy of 97.9% of ATMH, 87.1% of AP,3.2 ± 3.0 of N-score, 3.1 ± 2.8 of C-score. Mem BrainContact obtains 62%/64.1% prediction accuracy on training and independent dataset on top L/5 contact prediction,respectively. And Mem Brain-Rasa achieves Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.733 and its mean absolute error of13.593. These prediction results provide valuable hints for revealing the structure and function of membrane proteins.Mem Brain web server is free for academic use and available at www.csbio.sjtu.edu.cn/bioinf/Mem Brain/.

RNA structure prediction:Progress and perspective

Many recent exciting discoveries have revealed the versatility of RNAs and their importance in a variety of cellular functions which are strongly coupled to RNA structures. To understand the functions of RNAs, some structure prediction models have been developed in recent years. In this review, the progress in computational models for RNA structure prediction is introduced and the distinguishing features of many outstanding algorithms are discussed, emphasizing three- dimensional （3D） structure prediction. A promising coarse-grained model for predicting RNA 3D structure, stability and salt effect is also introduced briefly. Finally, we discuss the major challenges in the RNA 3D structure modeling.

Protein Secondary Structure Prediction with Dynamic Self-Adaptation Combination Strategy Based on Entropy

The algorithm based on combination learning usually is superior to a singleclassification algorithm on the task of protein secondary structure prediction. However,the assignment of the weight of the base classifier usually lacks decision-makingevidence. In this paper, we propose a protein secondary structure prediction method withdynamic self-adaptation combination strategy based on entropy, where the weights areassigned according to the entropy of posterior probabilities outputted by base classifiers.The higher entropy value means a lower weight for the base classifier. The final structureprediction is decided by the weighted combination of posterior probabilities. Extensiveexperiments on CB513 dataset demonstrates that the proposed method outperforms theexisting methods, which can effectively improve the prediction performance.

Ensemble Machine Learning to Enhance Q8 Protein Secondary Structure Prediction

Protein structure prediction is one of the most essential objectives practiced by theoretical chemistry and bioinformatics as it is of a vital importance in medicine,biotechnology and more.Protein secondary structure prediction(PSSP)has a significant role in the prediction of protein tertiary structure,as it bridges the gap between the protein primary sequences and tertiary structure prediction.Protein secondary structures are classified into two categories:3-state category and 8-state category.Predicting the 3 states and the 8 states of secondary structures from protein sequences are called the Q3 prediction and the Q8 prediction problems,respectively.The 8 classes of secondary structures reveal more precise structural information for a variety of applications than the 3 classes of secondary structures,however,Q8 prediction has been found to be very challenging,that is why all previous work done in PSSP have focused on Q3 prediction.In this paper,we develop an ensemble Machine Learning(ML)approach for Q8 PSSP to explore the performance of ensemble learning algorithms compared to that of individual ML algorithms in Q8 PSSP.The ensemble members considered for constructing the ensemble models are well known classifiers,namely SVM(Support Vector Machines),KNN(K-Nearest Neighbor),DT(Decision Tree),RF(Random Forest),and NB(Naïve Bayes),with two feature extraction techniques,namely LDA(Linear Discriminate Analysis)and PCA(Principal Component Analysis).Experiments have been conducted for evaluating the performance of single models and ensemble models,with PCA and LDA,in Q8 PSSP.The novelty of this paper lies in the introduction of ensemble learning in Q8 PSSP problem.The experimental results confirmed that ensemble ML models are more accurate than individual ML models.They also indicated that features extracted by LDA are more effective than those extracted by PCA.

Structure Prediction Based on Hydrophobic to Hydrophilic Volume Ratios in Small Molecule Amphiphilic Organic Crystals

The structure type for the crystal of 4,4'-bis-(2-hydroxy-ethoxyl)-biphenyl 1 has been predicted by using the previously developed interfacial model for small organic molecules. Based on the calculated hydrophobic to hydrophilic volume of 1, this model predicts the crystal structure to be of lamellar or bicontinuous type, which has been confirmed by the X-ray single-crystal structure analysis (C20H26O6, monoclinic, P21/C, a = 16.084(1), b = 6.0103(4), c = 9.6410(7) A, β9 = 103.014(2)°, V= 908.1(1) A3, Z = 2, Dc= 1.325 g/cm3, F(000)=388,μ = 0.097 mm-1, MoKα radiation, λ = 0.71073 A, R = 0.0382 and wR = 0.0882 with I > 2σ(I) for 7121 reflections collected, 1852 unique reflections and 170 parameters). As predicted, the hydrophobic and hydrophilic portions of 1 form in the lamellae. The same interfacial model is applied to other amphilphilic small molecule organic systems for structural type prediction.

Improving RNA secondary structure prediction using direct coupling analysis

Secondary structures of RNAs are the basis of understanding their tertiary structures and functions and so their predictions are widely needed due to increasing discovery of noncoding RNAs.In the last decades,a lot of methods have been proposed to predict RNA secondary structures but their accuracies encountered bottleneck.Here we present a method for RNA secondary structure prediction using direct coupling analysis and a remove-and-expand algorithm that shows better performance than four existing popular multiple-sequence methods.We further show that the results can also be used to improve the prediction accuracy of the single-sequence methods.

The Evolutionary Computation Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction:A Survey

In this paper, the applications of evolutionary algorithm in prediction of protein secondary structure and tertiary structures are introduced, and recent studies on solving protein structure prediction problems using evolutionary algorithms are reviewed, and the challenges and prospects of EAs applied to protein structure modeling are analyzed and discussed.

IMPROVED METHOD FOR RNA SECONDARY STRUCTURE PREDICTION'

A simple stepwise folding process has been developed to simulate RNA secondary structure formation.Modifications for the energy parameters of various loops were included in the program.Five possible types of pseudoknots including the well known H-type pseudoknot were permitted to occur if reasonable.We have applied this approach to e number of RNA sequences.The prediction accuracies we obtained were higher than those in published papers.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A SPECIFIC CHIP FOR RNA SECONDARY STRUCTURE PREDICTION

The architecture of a BioAccel (internal code) chip for RNA secondary structure prediction is described in the letter. The system is based on a BioBus (internal code), whose distinguishing features are: Two separated control and data channels, and a slave-associated arbitration scheme. Two reference systems based on the AMBA AHB bus and Coreconnect bus are introduced to evaluate the performance of the system. The simulation results are attractive. The average communication bandwidth of the chip is increased at severalfold, and the read and write latencies are reduced about 40 percent.

Application of ACO algorithm in protein structure prediction

The hydrophobic-polar (HP) lattice model is an important simplified model for studying protein folding. In this paper, we present an improved ACO algorithm for the protein structure prediction. In the algorithm, the "lone"ethod is applied to deal with the infeasible structures, and the "oint mutation and reconstruction"ethod is applied in local search phase. The empirical results show that the presented method is feasible and effective to solve the problem of protein structure prediction, and notable improvements in CPU time are obtained.

Heuristic Quasi-physical Algorithm for Protein Structure Prediction

A three-dimensional off-lattice protein model with two species of monomers, hydrophobic and hydrophilic, is studied. Enligh- tened by the law of reciprocity among things in the physical world, a heuristic quasi-physical algorithm for protein structure prediction problem is put forward. First, by elaborately simulating the movement of the smooth elastic balls in the physical world, the algorithm finds low energy configurations for a given monomer chain. An ＂off-trap＂ strategy is then proposed to get out of local minima. Experimental results show promising performance. For all chains with lengths 13≤n ≤55, the proposed algorithm finds states with lower energy than the putative ground states reported in literatures. Furthermore, for chain lengths n = 21, 34, and 55, the algorithm finds new low energy configurations different from those given in literatures.

Evaluating Performance of Different RNA Secondary Structure Prediction Programs Using Self-cleaving Ribozymes

Accurate identification of the correct,biologically relevant RNA structures is critical to understanding various aspects of RNA biology since proper folding represents the key to the functionality of all types of RNA molecules and plays pivotal roles in many essential biological processes.Thus,a plethora of approaches have been developed to predict,identify,or solve RNA structures based on various computational,molecular,genetic,chemical,or physicochemical strategies.Purely computational approaches hold distinct advantages over all other strategies in terms of the ease of implementation,time,speed,cost,and throughput,but they strongly underperform in terms of accuracy that significantly limits their broader application.Nonetheless,the advantages of these methods led to a steady development of multiple in silico RNA secondary structure prediction approaches including recent deep learning-based programs.Here,we compared the accuracy of predictions of biologically relevant secondary structures of dozens of self-cleaving ribozyme sequences using seven in silico RNA folding prediction tools with tasks of varying complexity.We found that while many programs performed well in relatively simple tasks,their performance varied significantly in more complex RNA folding problems.However,in general,a modern deep learning method outperformed the other programs in the complex tasks in predicting the RNA secondary structures,at least based on the specific class of sequences tested,suggesting that it may represent the future of RNA structure prediction algorithms.

Stable structures and properties of Ru_(2)Al_(5)

Novel ordered intermetallic compounds have stimulated much interest.Ru–Al alloys are a prominent class of hightemperature structural materials,but the experimentally reported crystal structure of the intermetallic Ru_(2)Al_(5) phase remains elusive and debatable.To resolve this controversy,we extensively explored the crystal structures of Ru_(2)Al_(5) using first-principles calculations combined with crystal structure prediction technique.Among the calculated x-ray diffraction patterns and lattice parameters of five candidate Ru2Al5structures,those of the orthorhombic Pmmn structure best aligned with recent experimental results.The structural stabilities of the five Ru_(2)Al_(5)structures were confirmed through formation energy,elastic constants,and phonon spectrum calculations.We also comprehensively analyzed the mechanical and electronic properties of the five candidates.This work can guide the exploration of novel ordered intermetallic compounds in Ru–Al alloys.

Sequence identification, structure prediction and validation of tannase from Aspergillusniger N5-5

Tannases produced by filamentous fungi are in a family of important hydrolases of gallotannins and have broad industry applications.But until now,the 3-D structures of fungi tannases have not been reported.The protein sequence deduced from the cDNA sequence obtained using RT-PCR amplification was identified as tannase through sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis.Structure models based on the tannase sequence were collected using I-TASSER,and the model with the best match to the surface charge density-pH titration profile was selected as the final structure for tannase from Aspergillusniger N5-5.This work provides an effective method for protein structure research.The structure constructed in this work should be very important to understand the enzyme bioactivities and further developments of fungi tannases.

Protein Structure Prediction:Challenges,Advances,and the Shift of Research Paradigms

Protein structure prediction is an interdisciplinary research topic that has attracted researchers from multiple fields,including biochemistry,medicine,physics,mathematics,and computer science.These researchers adopt various research paradigms to attack the same structure prediction problem:biochemists and physicists attempt to reveal the principles governing protein folding;mathematicians,especially statisticians,usually start from assuming a probability distribution of protein structures given a target sequence and then find the most likely structure,while computer scientists formulate protein structure prediction as an optimization problem-finding the structural conformation with the lowest energy or minimizing the difference between predicted structure and native structure.These research paradigms fall into the two statistical modeling cultures proposed by Leo Breiman,namely,data modeling and algorithmic modeling.Recently,we have also witnessed the great success of deep learning in protein structure prediction.In this review,we present a survey of the efforts for protein structure prediction.We compare the research paradigms adopted by researchers from different fields,with an emphasis on the shift of research paradigms in the era of deep learning.In short,the algorithmic modeling techniques,especially deep neural networks,have considerably improved the accuracy of protein structure prediction;however,theories interpreting the neural networks and knowledge on protein folding are still highly desired.

Enhancing crystal structure prediction by decomposition and evolution schemes based on graph theory

Crystal structure prediction algorithms have become powerful tools for materials discovery in recent years, however, they are usually limited to relatively small systems. The main challenge is that the number of local minima grows exponentially with the system size. In this work, we proposed two crossover-mutation schemes based on graph theory to accelerate the evolutionary structure searching by automatic decomposition methods. These schemes can detect molecules or clusters inside periodic networks using quotient graphs for crystals, and the decomposition can dramatically reduce the searching space. Sufficient examples for test, including the high-pressure phases of methane, ammonia, MgAl2O4 and boron, show that these new evolution schemes can significantly improve the success rate and searching efficiency compared with the standard method in both isolated and extended systems.

Computational prediction of RNA tertiary structures using machine learning methods

RNAs play crucial and versatile roles in biological processes. Computational prediction approaches can help to understand RNA structures and their stabilizing factors, thus providing information on their functions, and facilitating the design of new RNAs. Machine learning (ML) techniques have made tremendous progress in many fields in the past few years. Although their usage in protein-related fields has a long history, the use of ML methods in predicting RNA tertiary structures is new and rare. Here, we review the recent advances of using ML methods on RNA structure predictions and discuss the advantages and limitation, the difficulties and potentials of these approaches when applied in the field.

Accelerating inverse crystal structure prediction by machine learning:A case study of carbon allotropes

Based on structure prediction method,the machine learning method is used instead of the density functional theory(DFT)method to predict the material properties,thereby accelerating the material search process.In this paper,we established a data set of carbon materials by high-throughput calculation with available carbon structures obtained from the Samara Carbon Allotrope Database.We then trained a machine learning(ML)model that specifically predicts the elastic modulus(bulk modulus,shear modulus,and the Young's modulus)and confirmed that the accuracy is better than that of AFLOW-ML in predicting the elastic modulus of a carbon allotrope.We further combined our ML model with the CALYPSO code to search for new carbon structures with a high Young's modulus.A new carbon allotrope not included in the Samara Carbon Allotrope Database,named Cmcm-C24,which exhibits a hardness greater than 80 GPa,was firstly revealed.The Cmcm-C24 phase was identified as a semiconductor with a direct bandgap.The structural stability,elastic modulus,and electronic properties of the new carbon allotrope were systematically studied,and the obtained results demonstrate the feasibility of ML methods accelerating the material search process.

Structure Prediction of Membrane Proteins

There is a large gap between the number of membrane protein (MP) sequencesand that of their decoded 3D structures, especially high-resolution structures, due to difficultiesin crystal preparation of MPs. However, detailed knowledge of the 3D structure is required for thefundamental understanding of the function of an MP and the interactions between the protein and itsinhibitors or activators. In this paper, some computational approaches that have been used topredict MP structures are discussed and compared.