Protein-Protein Complex Structure Predictions by Multimeric Threading and Template Recombination
Open accessAbstract
The total number of protein-protein complex structures currently available in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) is six times smaller than the total number of tertiary structures in the PDB, which limits the power of homology-based approaches to complex structure modeling. We present a threading-recombination approach, COTH, to boost the protein complex structure library by combining tertiary structure templates with complex alignments. The query sequences are first aligned to complex templates using a modified dynamic programming algorithm, guided by ab initio binding-site predictions. The monomer alignments are then shifted to the multimeric template framework by structural alignments. COTH was tested on 500 nonhomologous dimeric proteins, which can successfully detect correct templates for 50% of the cases after homologous templates are excluded, which significantly outperforms conventional homology modeling algorithms. It also shows a higher accuracy in interface modeling than rigid-body docking of unbound structures from ZDOCK although with lower coverage. These data demonstrate new avenues to model complex structures from nonhomologous templates.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Template-based methods for predicting protein complex structures utilize experimentally resolved multimeric structures.
“A second class of approaches is template-based methods, which utilize experimentally resolved multimeric structures12–16.”
From AF2Complex predicts direct physical interactions in multimeric proteins with deep learning (2022) · cites this paper as [16]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Gapped BLAST and PSI-BLAST: a new generation of protein database search programs
Altschul, S. (1997) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/25.17.3389 · Cited by 73,302 · see citing works
Comparative Protein Modelling by Satisfaction of Spatial Restraints
Šali, A., & Blundell, T. L. (1993) · Journal of Molecular Biology · doi:10.1006/jmbi.1993.1626 · Cited by 12,977 · see citing works
Protein secondary structure prediction based on position-specific scoring matrices.
Jones, D. C. (1999) · Journal of Molecular Biology · doi:10.1006/jmbi.1999.3091 · Cited by 5,741 · see citing works
Scoring function for automated assessment of protein structure template quality
Zhang, Y., & Skolnick, J. (2004) · Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.20264 · Cited by 2,392 · see citing works
Self-citationPfam: clans, web tools and services
FINN, R. (2005) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/gkj149 · Cited by 2,307 · see citing works
ZDOCK: An initial‐stage protein‐docking algorithm
Chen, R., Li, L., & Weng, Z. (2003) · Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.10389 · Cited by 1,393 · see citing works
Katchalski-Katzir, E., Shariv, I., Eisenstein, M., Friesem, A., Aflalo, C., & Vakser, I. (1992) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · doi:10.1073/pnas.89.6.2195 · Cited by 1,143 · see citing works
Gray, J. J., Moughon, S. E., Wang, C., Schueler‐Furman, O., Kuhlman, B. A., Rohl, C. A., & Baker, D. A. (2003) · Journal of Molecular Biology · doi:10.1016/s0022-2836(03)00670-3 · Cited by 1,130 · see citing works
ClusPro: a fully automated algorithm for protein-protein docking
Comeau, S. R., GATCHELL, D. W., Vajda, S., & Camacho, C. J. (2004) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/gkh354 · Cited by 826 · see citing works
GRAMM-X public web server for protein-protein docking
Tovchigrechko, A., & Vakser, I. A. (2006) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/gkl206 · Cited by 807 · see citing works
LOMETS: A local meta-threading-server for protein structure prediction
Wu, S., & Zhang, Y. (2007) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/gkm251 · Cited by 774 · see citing works
Self-citationAb initio modeling of small proteins by iterative TASSER simulations
Wu, S., Skolnick, J., & Zhang, Y. (2007) · BMC Biology · doi:10.1186/1741-7007-5-17 · Cited by 512 · see citing works
Self-citationProgress and challenges in protein structure prediction
Zhang, Y. (2008) · Current Opinion in Structural Biology · doi:10.1016/j.sbi.2008.02.004 · Cited by 507 · see citing works
Self-citationAssessment of blind predictions of protein–protein interactions: Current status of docking methods
Mendez, R., Leplae, R., Maria, L. D., & Wodak, S. (2003) · Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.10393 · Cited by 438 · see citing works
I‐TASSER: Fully automated protein structure prediction in CASP8
Zhang, Y. (2009) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22588 · Cited by 420 · see citing works
Self-citationStructure-Based Assembly of Protein Complexes in Yeast
Aloy, P., Böttcher, B., Ceulemans, H., Leutwein, C., Mellwig, C., Fischer, S., Gavin, A.-C., Bork, P., Superti-Furga, G., Serrano, L., et al. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1092645 · Cited by 383 · see citing works
Wu, S., & Zhang, Y. (2008) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.21945 · Cited by 375 · see citing works
Self-citationAutomated structure prediction of weakly homologous proteins on a genomic scale
Zhang, Y., & Skolnick, J. (2004) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0305695101 · Cited by 344 · see citing works
Self-citationAssessment of CAPRI predictions in rounds 3–5 shows progress in docking procedures
Méndez, R., Leplae, R., Lensink, M. F., & Wodak, S. J. (2005) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.20551 · Cited by 336 · see citing works
RDOCK: Refinement of rigid‐body protein docking predictions
Li, L., Chen, R., & Weng, Z. (2003) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.10460 · Cited by 331 · see citing works
Critical assessment of methods of protein structure prediction—Round VII
Moult, J., Fidelis, K. A., Kryshtafovych, A., Rost, B., Hubbard, T., & Tramontano, A. L. (2007) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.21767 · Cited by 321 · see citing works
The protein structure prediction problem could be solved using the current PDB library
Zhang, Y., & Skolnick, J. (2005) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0407152101 · Cited by 297 · see citing works
Self-citationA structural perspective on protein?protein interactions
Russell, R. B., Alber, F., Aloy, P., Davis, F. P., Korkin, D., Pichaud, M., Topf, M., & Šali, A. (2004) · Current Opinion in Structural Biology · doi:10.1016/j.sbi.2004.04.006 · Cited by 263 · see citing works
Predicted protein–protein interaction sites from local sequence information
Ofran, Y., & Rost, B. (2003) · FEBS Letters · doi:10.1016/s0014-5793(03)00456-3 · Cited by 258 · see citing works
Protein–protein docking benchmark version 3.0
Hwang, H., Pierce, B. G., Mintseris, J., Janin, J., & Weng, Z. (2008) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22106 · Cited by 256 · see citing works
Lu, L. J., Lu, H. J., & Skolnick, J. (2002) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.10222 · Cited by 240 · see citing works
Kozakov, D., Hall, D. R., Beglov, D., et al. (2010) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22835 · Cited by 239 · see citing works
Docking and scoring protein interactions: CAPRI 2009
Lensink, M. F., & Wodak, S. J. (2010) · Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22818 · Cited by 226 · see citing works
Prospects for ab initio protein structural genomics
Simons, K. T., Strauss, C. E. M., & Baker, D. A. (2001) · Journal of Molecular Biology · doi:10.1006/jmbi.2000.4459 · Cited by 193 · see citing works
Ten thousand interactions for the molecular biologist
Aloy, P., & Russell, R. B. (2004) · Nature Biotechnology · doi:10.1038/nbt1018 · Cited by 191 · see citing works
Critical assessment of methods of protein structure prediction—Round VIII
Moult, J., Fidelis, K. A., Kryshtafovych, A., Rost, B., & Tramontano, A. L. (2009) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22589 · Cited by 186 · see citing works
Development and testing of an automated approach to protein docking
Tovchigrechko, A., & Vakser, I. A. (2005) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.20573 · Cited by 178 · see citing works
Mukherjee, S., & Zhang, Y. (2009) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/gkp318 · Cited by 178 · see citing works
Self-citationDevelopment and large scale benchmark testing of the PROSPECTOR_3 threading algorithm
Skolnick, J., Kihara, D., & Zhang, Y. (2004) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.20106 · Cited by 168 · see citing works
Self-citationSircar, A., & Gray, J. J. (2010) · PLoS Computational Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000644 · Cited by 166 · see citing works
ATTRACT: Protein–protein docking in CAPRI using a reduced protein model
Zacharias, M. (2005) · Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.20566 · Cited by 113 · see citing works
Protein–protein docking: is the glass half-full or half-empty?
Vajda, S., & Camacho, C. J. (2004) · Trends in biotechnology · doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2004.01.006 · Cited by 109 · see citing works
Protein complexes: structure prediction challenges for the 21st century
Aloy, P., Pichaud, M., & Russell, R. B. (2005) · Current Opinion in Structural Biology · doi:10.1016/j.sbi.2005.01.012 · Cited by 84 · see citing works
D ockground resource for studying protein–protein interfaces
Douguet, D., Chen, H.-C., Tovchigrechko, A., & Vakser, I. A. (2006) · Bioinformatics · doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btl447 · Cited by 84 · see citing works
Huang, S., & Zou, X. (2010) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22797 · Cited by 83 · see citing works
Blind predictions of protein interfaces by docking calculations in CAPRI
Lensink, M. F., & Wodak, S. J. (2010) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22850 · Cited by 80 · see citing works
Performance of ZDOCK and ZRANK in CAPRI rounds 13–19
Hwang, H., Vreven, T., Pierce, B. G., Hung, J., & Weng, Z. (2010) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22764 · Cited by 74 · see citing works
Binding site prediction and improved scoring during flexible protein–protein docking with ATTRACT
Fiorucci, S., & Zacharias, M. (2010) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22808 · Cited by 68 · see citing works
The performance of ZDOCK and ZRANK in rounds 6–11 of CAPRI
Wiehe, K. J., Pierce, B. G., Tong, W. W., Hwang, H., Mintseris, J., & Weng, Z. (2007) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.21747 · Cited by 67 · see citing works
Identification of near‐native structures by clustering protein docking conformations
Lorenzen, S., & Zhang, Y. (2007) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.21442 · Cited by 65 · see citing works
Self-citationKundrotas, P. J., Lensink, M. F., & Alexov, E. (2008) · International Journal of Biological Macromolecules · doi:10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2008.05.004 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
A generalized approach to sampling backbone conformations with RosettaDock for CAPRI rounds 13–19
Sircar, A., Chaudhury, S., Kilambi, K. P., et al. (2010) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22765 · Cited by 48 · see citing works
The targets of CAPRI rounds 6–12
Janin, J. (2007) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.21689 · Cited by 47 · see citing works
CASP8 results in context of previous experiments
Kryshtafovych, A., Fidelis, K. A., & Moult, J. (2009) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22562 · Cited by 43 · see citing works
The targets of CAPRI Rounds 13–19
Janin, J. (2010) · Proteins Structure Function and Bioinformatics · doi:10.1002/prot.22774 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
Lorenzen, S., & Zhang, Y. (2007) · Protein Science · doi:10.1110/ps.072847207 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Vreven, T., Moal, I. H., Vangone, A., Pierce, B. G., Kastritis, P. L., Torchala, M., Chaleil, R., Jiménez-García, B., Bates, P. A., Fernandez-Recio, J., et al. (2015) · Journal of Molecular Biology · doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2015.07.016 · Cited by 424 · see citing works
Predicting Protein–Protein Interactions from the Molecular to the Proteome Level
Keskin, O., Tuncbag, N., & Gursoy, A. (2016) · Chemical Reviews · doi:10.1021/acs.chemrev.5b00683 · Cited by 369 · see citing works
AF2Complex predicts direct physical interactions in multimeric proteins with deep learning
Gao, M., Nakajima An, D., Parks, J. M., & Skolnick, J. (2022) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-022-29394-2 · Cited by 252 · see citing works
Templates are available to model nearly all complexes of structurally characterized proteins
Kundrotas, P. J., Zhu, Z., Janin, J., & Vakser, I. A. (2012) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1200678109 · Cited by 179 · see citing works
Xiong, P., Zhang, C., Zheng, W., & Zhang, Y. (2017) · Journal of Molecular Biology · doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2016.11.022 · Cited by 140 · see citing works
Self-citationWalia, R. R., Xue, L. C., Wilkins, K., El-Manzalawy, Y., Dobbs, D., & Honavar, V. (2014) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0097725 · Cited by 132 · see citing works
“Homology-based methods have proven successful in many bioinformatics tasks, including protein structure prediction [42], protein function annotation [43,44], protein interaction prediction [45], protein-protein docking [46,47] and protein-protein interface prediction, based on either sequence homology [48] or structur…”
MethodMapping Monomeric Threading to Protein–Protein Structure Prediction
Guerler, A., Govindarajoo, B., & Zhang, Y. (2013) · Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling · doi:10.1021/ci300579r · Cited by 73 · see citing works
Self-citationLow-resolution structural modeling of protein interactome
Vakser, I. A. (2013) · Current Opinion in Structural Biology · doi:10.1016/j.sbi.2012.12.003 · Cited by 62 · see citing works
Li, S., Wu, S., Wang, L., Li, F., Jiang, H., & Bai, F. (2022) · Current Opinion in Structural Biology · doi:10.1016/j.sbi.2022.102344 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Are protein-protein interfaces special regions on a protein’s surface?
Tonddast-Navaei, S., & Skolnick, J. (2015) · The Journal of Chemical Physics · doi:10.1063/1.4937428 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
Gong, W., Guerler, A., Zhang, C., Warner, E., Li, C., & Zhang, Y. (2021) · Journal of Molecular Biology · doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2021.166944 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Self-citationXia, Y., Pu, Y., Wang, S., Zhuang, J., Liu, D., Hou, M., & Zhang, G. (2025) · Journal of Molecular Biology · doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2025.169128 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
- Authors
- Mukherjee, S., & Zhang, Y.
- Affiliations
- University of Kansas (US)
- Corresponding author
- Zhang, Yang
- ORCID
- Zhang, Yang
- Venue
- Structure
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2011-07
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 955-966
- ISSN
- 0969-2126 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3134792
- OpenAlex
- W2139373949
- Cited by
- 174
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 15 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 4.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Structure (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (GM-083107, R01GM084222, GM-084222, R01GM083107)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Protein Structure and Dynamics
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › Enzyme Structure and Function
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computational Theory and Mathematics › Computational Drug Discovery Methods
- Keywords
- protein-protein complex structure prediction, homology modeling, binding site prediction, structural alignment, dimeric protein, interface modeling, rigid-body docking
- MeSH terms
- Algorithms, Animals, Binding Sites, Humans, Models, Molecular, Protein Binding, Protein Conformation, Proteins, Software, Protein Folding, Computational Biology, Protein Interaction Mapping, Databases, Protein, Protein Multimerization
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review