PreprintCited by 86Protein Structure and DynamicsEnzyme Structure and Functionvaccines and immunoinformatics approaches

Can AlphaFold2 predict protein-peptide complex structures accurately?

Open access
Ko, Junsu, Lee, Juyong·2021·bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)

Abstract

A bstract In this preprint, we investigated whether AlphaFold2, AF2, can predict protein-peptide complex structures only with sequence information. We modeled the structures of 203 protein-peptide complexes from the PepBDB DB and 183 from the PepSet. The structures were modeling with concatenated sequences of receptors and peptides via poly-glycine linker. We found that for more than half of the test cases, AF2 predicted the bound structures of peptides with good accuracy, C α -RMSD of a peptide < 3.0 Å. For about 40% of cases, the peptide structures were modeled with an accuracy of C α -RMSD < 2.0 Å. Our benchmark results clearly show that AF2 has a great potential to be applied to various higher-order structure prediction tasks.

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.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1101/2021.07.27.453972

Cites

14 of 14 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

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?

  • Contact predictions can be used to simultaneously fold and dock proteins, and AF2 can predict the structure of complexes.

    “it has been shown recently that contact predictions can be used to simultaneously fold and dock proteins17, and early reports have indicated that AF2 can predict the structure of complexes18–20, which it was not initially trained to handle.”
  • An early study adapted AF2 to complex prediction by connecting two protein sequences with a poly-glycine linker.

    “One early such study involved simply connecting two protein sequences with a poly-glycine linker, thus converting it into a single-chain structure prediction problem19.”

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

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Ko, J., & Lee, J.
Affiliations
Kangwon National University (KR)
Corresponding author
  • Ko, Junsu
  • Lee, Juyong
Venue
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Publisher
openRxiv
Published
2021-07-27
OpenAlex
W3186381913
Cited by
83
References
14
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 6
Type
posted content
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by-nc-nd
Locations
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Protein Structure and Dynamics
  • Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › Enzyme Structure and Function
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches
Keywords
AlphaFold2, protein-peptide complex, structure prediction, peptide binding, benchmarking

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