Title
T4SEfinder: a bioinformatics tool for genome-scale prediction of bacterial type IV secreted effectors using pre-trained protein language model
Abstract
Bacterial type IV secretion systems (T4SSs) are versatile and membrane-spanning apparatuses, which mediate both genetic exchange and delivery of effector proteins to target eukaryotic cells. The secreted effectors (T4SEs) can affect gene expression and signal transduction of the host cells. As such, they often function as virulence factors and play an important role in bacterial pathogenesis. Nowadays, T4SE prediction tools have utilized various machine learning algorithms, but the accuracy and speed of these tools remain to be improved. In this study, we apply a sequence embedding strategy from a pre-trained language model of protein sequences (TAPE) to the classification task of T4SEs. The training dataset is mainly derived from our updated type IV secretion system database SecReT4 with newly experimentally verified T4SEs. An online web server termed T4SEfinder is developed using TAPE and a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) for T4SE prediction after a comprehensive performance comparison with several candidate models, which achieves a slightly higher level of accuracy than the existing prediction tools. It only takes about 3 minutes to make a classification for 5000 protein sequences by T4SEfinder so that the computational speed is qualified for whole genome-scale T4SEs detection in pathogenic bacteria. T4SEfinder might contribute to meet the increasing demands of re-annotating secretion systems and effector proteins in sequenced bacterial genomes. T4SEfinder is freely accessible at https://tool2-mml.sjtu.edu.cn/T4SEfinder_TAPE/.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1093/bib/bbab420
BRIEFINGS IN BIOINFORMATICS
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Type IV secreted effectors, pre-trained language model, sequence analysis, deep learning
Journal
23
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
1
1467-5463
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
yumeng zhang118.47
Yangming Zhang200.34
Yi Xiong3548.94
Hui Wang417743.68
Zixin Deng5395.74
Jiangning Song637441.93
Hong-Yu Ou7395.69