LDmotif

LDmotif is a computational framework for identifying leucine-aspartic acid (LD) motifs, which are short linear interaction motifs (SLiMs) that connect paxillin family proteins to factors regulating cell adhesion, motility, and survival. The key features of LDmotif are:

1. It employs an active learning approach that iteratively combines computational predictions with experimental validation to identify LD motifs across the human proteome.

2. The framework revealed several new proteins containing LD motifs, expanding the knowledge beyond the paxillin family.

3. LDmotif helped uncover the evolutionary history of LD motif signaling, tracing its origin to unicellular eukaryotes more than 800 million years ago, with paxillin and vinculin as core components.

4. The analysis showed that LD motif proteins form a functionally homogeneous group, all involved in cell morphogenesis and adhesion. This functional focus is intrinsic to the LD motif sequence.