Next Generation Protein Structure Predictions and Genetic Variant Interpretation
Open accessAbstract
The need to make sense of the thousands of genetic variants uncovered every day in terms of pathology or biological mechanism is acute. Many insights into how genetic changes impact protein function can be gleaned if three-dimensional structures of the associated proteins are available. The availability of a highly accurate method of predicting structures from amino acid sequences (e.g. Alphafold2) is thus potentially a great boost to those wanting to understand genetic changes. In this paper we discuss the current state of protein structures known for the human and other proteomes and how Alphafold2 might impact on variant interpretation efforts. For the human proteome in particular, the state of the available structural data suggests that the impact on variant interpretation might be less than anticipated. We also discuss additional efforts in structure prediction that could further aid the understanding of genetic variants.
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AF2 may struggle to predict structures of extended proteins or proteins with repeat elements.
“AF2 may also exhibit difficulties in structure prediction for extended proteins or proteins with repeat elements35”
From The power and pitfalls of AlphaFold2 for structure prediction beyond rigid globular proteins (2024) · cites this paper as [35]
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AlphaFold, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Allostery
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“Second, AF2 performs poorly for targets embedded in membrane thickness outside the range of 15–35 Å as well as targets with novel features not commonly present in the PDB.”
BackgroundPredicting the pathogenicity of missense variants using features derived from AlphaFold2
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- Authors
- Diwan, G. D., Gonzalez-Sanchez, J. C., Apic, G., & Russell, R. B.
- Affiliations
- Heidelberg University (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Russell, Robert B.
- Venue
- Journal of Molecular Biology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-10
- Volume
- 433
- Issue
- 20
- Pages
- 167180
- ISSN
- 0022-2836 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3187111887
- Cited by
- 30
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 2
- FWCI
- 0.65
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Molecular Biology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Vetenskapsrådet (2018-05882)
- Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
- German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure
- Wellcome Trust (210585/B/18/Z)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Protein Structure and Dynamics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genomics and Rare Diseases
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › Enzyme Structure and Function
- Keywords
- protein structure prediction, variant interpretation, AlphaFold2, human proteome, protein 3D structure, structural genomics, pathogenic variants, protein function
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Humans, Models, Molecular, Protein Conformation, Proteins, Genetic Variation, Proteome, Genomics
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