Title
The PickPocket method for predicting binding specificities for receptors based on receptor pocket similarities: application to MHC-peptide binding.
Abstract
Motivation: Receptor-ligand interactions play an important role in controlling many biological systems. One prominent example is the binding of peptides to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules controlling the onset of cellular immune responses. Thousands of MHC allelic versions exist, making determination of the binding specificity for each variant experimentally infeasible. Here, we present a method that can extrapolate from variants with known binding specificity to those where no experimental data are available. Results: For each position in the peptide ligand, we extracted the polymorphic pocket residues in MHC molecules that are in close proximity to the peptide residue. For MHC molecules with known specificities, we established a library of pocket-residues and corresponding binding specificities. The binding specificity for a novel MHC molecule is calculated as the average of the specificities of MHC molecules in this library weighted by the similarity of their pocket-residues to the query. This PickPocket method is demonstrated to accurately predict MHC-peptide binding for a broad range of MHC alleles, including human and non-human species. In contrast to neural network-based pan-specific methods, PickPocket was shown to be robust both when data is scarce and when the similarity to MHC molecules with characterized binding specificity is low. A consensus method combining the PickPocket and NetMHCpan methods was shown to achieve superior predictive performance. This study demonstrates how integration of diverse algorithmic approaches can lead to improved prediction. The method may also be used for making ligand-binding predictions for other types of receptors where many variants exist.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1093/bioinformatics/btp137
BIOINFORMATICS
Keywords
Field
DocType
amino acid sequence,protein binding,computational biology,histocompatibility antigens,binding sites,major histocompatibility complex
Plasma protein binding,Binding site,Biology,Peptide,Receptor,Major histocompatibility complex,Bioinformatics,Binding selectivity,Histocompatibility,Peptide sequence
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
25
10
1367-4803
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
4
0.46
8
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Hao Zhang19715.19
Ole Lund252744.47
Morten Nielsen340.46