We report the results of the “UM‐TBM” and “Zheng” groups in CASP15 for protein monomer and complex structure prediction. These prediction sets were obtained using the D‐I‐TASSER and DMFold‐Multimer algorithms, respectively. For monomer structure prediction, D‐I‐TASSER introduced four new features during CASP15: (i) a multiple sequence alignment (MSA) generation protocol that combines multi‐source MSA searching and a structural modeling‐based MSA ranker; (ii) attention‐network based spatial restraints; (iii) a multi‐domain module containing domain partition and arrangement for domain‐level templates and spatial restraints; (iv) an optimized I‐TASSER‐based folding simulation system for full‐length model creation guided by a combination of deep learning restraints, threading alignments, and knowledge‐based potentials. For 47 free modeling targets in CASP15, the final models predicted by D‐I‐TASSER showed average TM‐score 19% higher than the standard AlphaFold2 program. We thus showed that traditional Monte Carlo‐based folding simulations, when appropriately coupled with deep learning algorithms, can generate models with improved accuracy over end‐to‐end deep learning methods alone. For protein complex structure prediction, DMFold‐Multimer generated models by integrating a new MSA generation algorithm (DeepMSA2) with the end‐to‐end modeling module from AlphaFold2‐Multimer. For the 38 complex targets, DMFold‐Multimer generated models with an average TM‐score of 0.83 and Interface Contact Score of 0.60, both significantly higher than those of competing complex prediction tools. Our analyses on complexes highlighted the critical role played by MSA generating, ranking, and pairing in protein complex structure prediction. We also discuss future room for improvement in the areas of viral protein modeling and complex model ranking.
Most proteins in nature contain multiple folding units (or domains). The revolutionary success of AlphaFold2 in single-domain structure prediction showed potential to extend deep-learning techniques for multi-domain structure modeling. This work presents a significantly improved method, DEMO2, which integrates analogous template structural alignments with deep-learning techniques for high-accuracy domain structure assembly. Starting from individual domain models, inter-domain spatial restraints are first predicted with deep residual convolutional networks, where full-length structure models are assembled using L-BFGS simulations under the guidance of a hybrid energy function combining deep-learning restraints and analogous multi-domain template alignments searched from the PDB. The output of DEMO2 contains deep-learning inter-domain restraints, top-ranked multi-domain structure templates, and up to five full-length structure models. DEMO2 was tested on a large-scale benchmark and the blind CASP14 experiment, where DEMO2 was shown to significantly outperform its predecessor and the state-of-the-art protein structure prediction methods. By integrating with new deep-learning techniques, DEMO2 should help fill the rapidly increasing gap between the improved ability of tertiary structure determination and the high demand for the high-quality multi-domain protein structures. The DEMO2 server is available at https://zhanggroup.org/DEMO/.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10368739
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nucleic Acids Research
- Volume:
- 50
- Issue:
- W1
- ISSN:
- 0305-1048
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. W235-W245
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
more » « less
Abstract -
more » « less
Abstract Deep learning techniques have significantly advanced the field of protein structure prediction. LOMETS3 (https://zhanglab.ccmb.med.umich.edu/LOMETS/) is a new generation meta-server approach to template-based protein structure prediction and function annotation, which integrates newly developed deep learning threading methods. For the first time, we have extended LOMETS3 to handle multi-domain proteins and to construct full-length models with gradient-based optimizations. Starting from a FASTA-formatted sequence, LOMETS3 performs four steps of domain boundary prediction, domain-level template identification, full-length template/model assembly and structure-based function prediction. The output of LOMETS3 contains (i) top-ranked templates from LOMETS3 and its component threading programs, (ii) up to 5 full-length structure models constructed by L-BFGS (limited-memory Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno algorithm) optimization, (iii) the 10 closest Protein Data Bank (PDB) structures to the target, (iv) structure-based functional predictions, (v) domain partition and assembly results, and (vi) the domain-level threading results, including items (i)–(iii) for each identified domain. LOMETS3 was tested in large-scale benchmarks and the blind CASP14 (14th Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction) experiment, where the overall template recognition and function prediction accuracy is significantly beyond its predecessors and other state-of-the-art threading approaches, especially for hard targets without homologous templates in the PDB. Based on the improved developments, LOMETS3 should help significantly advance the capability of broader biomedical community for template-based protein structure and function modelling.
-
more » « less
Abstract Protein structure prediction is an important problem in bioinformatics and has been studied for decades. However, there are still few open-source comprehensive protein structure prediction packages publicly available in the field. In this paper, we present our latest open-source protein tertiary structure prediction system—MULTICOM2, an integration of template-based modeling (TBM) and template-free modeling (FM) methods. The template-based modeling uses sequence alignment tools with deep multiple sequence alignments to search for structural templates, which are much faster and more accurate than MULTICOM1. The template-free (ab initio or de novo) modeling uses the inter-residue distances predicted by DeepDist to reconstruct tertiary structure models without using any known structure as template. In the blind CASP14 experiment, the average TM-score of the models predicted by our server predictor based on the MULTICOM2 system is 0.720 for 58 TBM (regular) domains and 0.514 for 38 FM and FM/TBM (hard) domains, indicating that MULTICOM2 is capable of predicting good tertiary structures across the board. It can predict the correct fold for 76 CASP14 domains (95% regular domains and 55% hard domains) if only one prediction is made for a domain. The success rate is increased to 3% for both regular and hard domains if five predictions are made per domain. Moreover, the prediction accuracy of the pure template-free structure modeling method on both TBM and FM targets is very close to the combination of template-based and template-free modeling methods. This demonstrates that the distance-based template-free modeling method powered by deep learning can largely replace the traditional template-based modeling method even on TBM targets that TBM methods used to dominate and therefore provides a uniform structure modeling approach to any protein. Finally, on the 38 CASP14 FM and FM/TBM hard domains, MULTICOM2 server predictors (MULTICOM-HYBRID, MULTICOM-DEEP, MULTICOM-DIST) were ranked among the top 20 automated server predictors in the CASP14 experiment. After combining multiple predictors from the same research group as one entry, MULTICOM-HYBRID was ranked no. 5. The source code of MULTICOM2 is freely available at
https://github.com/multicom-toolbox/multicom/tree/multicom_v2.0 . -
more » « less
Abstract Substantial progresses in protein structure prediction have been made by utilizing deep‐learning and residue‐residue distance prediction since CASP13. Inspired by the advances, we improve our CASP14 MULTICOM protein structure prediction system by incorporating three new components: (a) a new deep learning‐based protein inter‐residue distance predictor to improve template‐free (ab initio) tertiary structure prediction, (b) an enhanced template‐based tertiary structure prediction method, and (c) distance‐based model quality assessment methods empowered by deep learning. In the 2020 CASP14 experiment, MULTICOM predictor was ranked seventh out of 146 predictors in tertiary structure prediction and ranked third out of 136 predictors in inter‐domain structure prediction. The results demonstrate that the template‐free modeling based on deep learning and residue‐residue distance prediction can predict the correct topology for almost all template‐based modeling targets and a majority of hard targets (template‐free targets or targets whose templates cannot be recognized), which is a significant improvement over the CASP13 MULTICOM predictor. Moreover, the template‐free modeling performs better than the template‐based modeling on not only hard targets but also the targets that have homologous templates. The performance of the template‐free modeling largely depends on the accuracy of distance prediction closely related to the quality of multiple sequence alignments. The structural model quality assessment works well on targets for which enough good models can be predicted, but it may perform poorly when only a few good models are predicted for a hard target and the distribution of model quality scores is highly skewed. MULTICOM is available at
https://github.com/jianlin-cheng/MULTICOM_Human_CASP14/tree/CASP14_DeepRank3 andhttps://github.com/multicom-toolbox/multicom/tree/multicom_v2.0 . -
more » « less
Abstract In this article, we report 3D structure prediction results by two of our best server groups (“Zhang‐Server” and “QUARK”) in CASP14. These two servers were built based on the D‐I‐TASSER and D‐QUARK algorithms, which integrated four newly developed components into the classical protein folding pipelines, I‐TASSER and QUARK, respectively. The new components include: (a) a new multiple sequence alignment (MSA) collection tool, DeepMSA2, which is extended from the DeepMSA program; (b) a contact‐based domain boundary prediction algorithm, FUpred, to detect protein domain boundaries; (c) a residual convolutional neural network‐based method, DeepPotential, to predict multiple spatial restraints by co‐evolutionary features derived from the MSA; and (d) optimized spatial restraint energy potentials to guide the structure assembly simulations. For 37 FM targets, the average TM‐scores of the first models produced by D‐I‐TASSER and D‐QUARK were 96% and 112% higher than those constructed by I‐TASSER and QUARK, respectively. The data analysis indicates noticeable improvements produced by each of the four new components, especially for the newly added spatial restraints from DeepPotential and the well‐tuned force field that combines spatial restraints, threading templates, and generic knowledge‐based potentials. However, challenges still exist in the current pipelines. These include difficulties in modeling multi‐domain proteins due to low accuracy in inter‐domain distance prediction and modeling protein domains from oligomer complexes, as the co‐evolutionary analysis cannot distinguish inter‐chain and intra‐chain distances. Specifically tuning the deep learning‐based predictors for multi‐domain targets and protein complexes may be helpful to address these issues.
