Cited by 1,144Protein Structure and DynamicsEnzyme Structure and FunctionRNA and protein synthesis mechanisms

Protein 3D Structure Computed from Evolutionary Sequence Variation

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Marks, Debora S., Colwell, Lucy J., Sheridan, Robert, Hopf, Thomas A., Pagnani, Andrea, Zecchina, Riccardo, Sander, Chris·2011·PLoS ONE

Abstract

The evolutionary trajectory of a protein through sequence space is constrained by its function. Collections of sequence homologs record the outcomes of millions of evolutionary experiments in which the protein evolves according to these constraints. Deciphering the evolutionary record held in these sequences and exploiting it for predictive and engineering purposes presents a formidable challenge. The potential benefit of solving this challenge is amplified by the advent of inexpensive high-throughput genomic sequencing.In this paper we ask whether we can infer evolutionary constraints from a set of sequence homologs of a protein. The challenge is to distinguish true co-evolution couplings from the noisy set of observed correlations. We address this challenge using a maximum entropy model of the protein sequence, constrained by the statistics of the multiple sequence alignment, to infer residue pair couplings. Surprisingly, we find that the strength of these inferred couplings is an excellent predictor of residue-residue proximity in folded structures. Indeed, the top-scoring residue couplings are sufficiently accurate and well-distributed to define the 3D protein fold with remarkable accuracy.We quantify this observation by computing, from sequence alone, all-atom 3D structures of fifteen test proteins from different fold classes, ranging in size from 50 to 260 residues, including a G-protein coupled receptor. These blinded inferences are de novo, i.e., they do not use homology modeling or sequence-similar fragments from known structures. The co-evolution signals provide sufficient information to determine accurate 3D protein structure to 2.7-4.8 Å C(α)-RMSD error relative to the observed structure, over at least two-thirds of the protein (method called EVfold, details at http://EVfold.org). This discovery provides insight into essential interactions constraining protein evolution and will facilitate a comprehensive survey of the universe of protein structures, new strategies in protein and drug design, and the identification of functional genetic variants in normal and disease genomes.

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  • The premise of methods to infer structure based on evolutionary couplings is that amino acids co-evolve in patterns reflective of the underlying structure because they exist and evolve in the context of 3D structure.

    “The premise of methods to infer structure based on evolutionary couplings is that, because amino acids exist and evolve in the context of 3D structure, they are not free to evolve independently, but instead co-evolve in patterns reflective of the underlying structure.”
  • One of the major insights leveraged by AlphaFold comes from the use of evolutionary covariations that can be extracted from large-scale multiple sequence alignments.

    “One of the major insights leveraged by AlphaFold 1,2 comes from the use of evolutionary covariations that can be extracted from large-scale multiple sequence alignments.[49][50][51][52][53][54]”

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Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. [23]Simons KT Bonneau R Ruczinski I Baker D 1999 Ab initio protein structure prediction of CASP III targets using ROSETTA. Proteins Suppl 3 171 176 10526365
  2. [49]Mezard M Mora T 2009 Constraint satisfaction problems and neural networks: A statistical physics perspective. J Physiol Paris 103 107 113 19616623
  3. [80]Lezon TR Banavar JR Cieplak M Maritan A Fedoroff NV 2006 Using the principle of entropy maximization to infer genetic interaction networks from gene expression patterns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103 19033 19038 17138668 PMC1748172

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Authors
Marks, D. S., Colwell, L. J., Sheridan, R., Hopf, T. A., Pagnani, A., Zecchina, R., & Sander, C.
Affiliations
  • Harvard University (US)
  • MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (GB)
  • Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (US)
  • Italian institute for Genomic Medicine (IT)
  • Politecnico di Torino (IT)
Corresponding author
Marks, Debora S.
Venue
PLoS ONE
Published
2011-12-07
Volume
6
Issue
12
Pages
e28766
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2061042699
Cited by
1,144
References
84
Citations by year
2026: 61 · 2025: 60 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 72 · 2022: 96 · 2021: 104 · 2020: 90 · 2019: 110 · 2018: 91 · 2017: 107 · 2016: 71 · 2015: 74 · 2014: 72 · 2013: 56 · 2012: 29
FWCI
20.79
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PORTO@Iris (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • PORTO Publications Open Repository TOrino (Politecnico di Torino) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
  • Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes
  • National Institutes of Health (NIH U54, CA143798)
  • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/H028064/1)
  • National Cancer Institute (U54CA143798)
  • National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM106303)
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 › RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms
Keywords
protein structure prediction, coevolution, maximum entropy model, multiple sequence alignment, de novo structure prediction, protein evolution, G protein-coupled receptors, protein engineering
MeSH terms
Animals, Humans, Protein Conformation, Proteins, Rhodopsin, Trypsin, Genetic Variation, Drug Design, Reproducibility of Results, Models, Statistical, Genome, Protein Structure, Tertiary, Evolution, Molecular, Entropy, Computational Biology, Catalytic Domain, Imaging, Three-Dimensional

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