Cited by 515Protein Structure and DynamicsMachine Learning in BioinformaticsEnzyme Structure and Function

Sequence co-evolution gives 3D contacts and structures of protein complexes

Open access
Hopf, Thomas A, Schärfe, Charlotta P I, Rodrigues, João P G L M, Green, Anna G, Kohlbacher, Oliver, Sander, Chris, Bonvin, Alexandre M J J, Marks, Debora S·2014·eLife

Published version of a preprint

Abstract

Protein–protein interactions are fundamental to many biological processes. Experimental screens have identified tens of thousands of interactions, and structural biology has provided detailed functional insight for select 3D protein complexes. An alternative rich source of information about protein interactions is the evolutionary sequence record. Building on earlier work, we show that analysis of correlated evolutionary sequence changes across proteins identifies residues that are close in space with sufficient accuracy to determine the three-dimensional structure of the protein complexes. We evaluate prediction performance in blinded tests on 76 complexes of known 3D structure, predict protein–protein contacts in 32 complexes of unknown structure, and demonstrate how evolutionary couplings can be used to distinguish between interacting and non-interacting protein pairs in a large complex. With the current growth of sequences, we expect that the method can be generalized to genome-wide elucidation of protein–protein interaction networks and used for interaction predictions at residue resolution.

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  • 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]”
  • Amino acid coevolution has been used to guide modeling of complexes for cases in which the structures of the partners are known, and to systematically identify pairs of interacting proteins in Prokaryotes with accuracy higher than experimental screens.

    “Such amino acid coevolution has been used to guide modeling of complexes for cases in which the structures of the partners are known (11,12), and to systematically identify pairs of interacting proteins in Prokaryotes with accuracy higher than experimental screens (9).”

    From Computed structures of core eukaryotic protein complexes (2021) · cites this paper as [12]

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Authors
Hopf, T. A., Schärfe, C. P. I., Rodrigues, J. P. G. L. M., Green, A. G., Kohlbacher, O., Sander, C., Bonvin, A. M. J. J., & Marks, D. S.
Affiliations
  • Harvard University (US)
  • Utrecht University (NL)
  • Quantitative Biology Center (DE)
  • Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (US)
Corresponding author
  • Sander, Chris
  • Bonvin, Alexandre M J J
  • Marks, Debora S
Venue
eLife
Published
2014-09-25
Volume
3
ISSN
2050-084X (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2120836664
Cited by
515
References
70
Citations by year
2026: 23 · 2025: 31 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 34 · 2022: 46 · 2021: 57 · 2020: 37 · 2019: 62 · 2018: 60 · 2017: 75 · 2016: 36 · 2015: 31 · 2014: 3
FWCI
19.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • eLife (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Funders
  • National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01 GM106303)
  • Fulbright Commission
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Protein Structure and Dynamics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Machine Learning in Bioinformatics
  • Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › Enzyme Structure and Function
Keywords
protein-protein interaction, protein complexes, correlated mutations, evolutionary coupling, 3D structure prediction, protein-protein interaction network
MeSH terms
Escherichia coli, Models, Molecular, Protein Binding, Protein Conformation, Gene Expression, Genome, Bacterial, Evolution, Molecular, Protein Interaction Mapping, Escherichia coli Proteins, Databases, Protein, Gene Regulatory Networks

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