MetaTASSER

MetaTASSER predicts protein tertiary structures by selecting threading templates, assembling threading-derived fragments and restraints with TASSER simulations, and ranking models for structural and functional inference.

Key Features:

• 3D-Jury consensus selection: Uses the 3D-Jury approach to select threading templates from multiple threading methods.
• Threading sources: Selects templates from SPARKS, SP3, and PROSPECTOR_3.
• Aligned fragments and tertiary restraints: Extracts aligned fragments and tertiary restraints from chosen templates as inputs for assembly.
• TASSER assembly: Employs the TASSER (Threading/ASSEmbly/Refinement) procedure to assemble fragments into full-length protein models.
• PRO-SP(3) threading refinement: Incorporates the PRO-SP(3) threading method to refine the quality of input models for TASSER.
• TASSER_2.0 contact prediction: Utilizes improved contact predictions from TASSER_2.0 to guide model building.
• Multiple short simulations: Runs multiple short TASSER simulations to construct comprehensive full-length models.
• TASSER-QA model assessment: Applies TASSER-QA for quality assessment and model selection.
• CASP performance improvement: Demonstrated improved performance in CASP8 relative to CASP7 attributed primarily to PRO-SP(3) and other method refinements.

Scientific Applications:

• Protein structure prediction: Generation of full-length tertiary structure models for proteins.
• Functional annotation: Inferring protein function from predicted structures and structural motifs.
• Molecular interaction studies: Providing structural models for studying protein–protein and protein–ligand interactions.
• Therapeutic target identification: Supporting identification and structural characterization of therapeutic targets for drug discovery.

Methodology:

3D-Jury selects threading templates from SPARKS, SP3, and PROSPECTOR_3; selected templates supply aligned fragments and tertiary restraints to the TASSER (Threading/ASSEmbly/Refinement) procedure; PRO-SP(3) refines input models; TASSER_2.0 provides improved contact predictions; multiple short TASSER simulations assemble full-length models; TASSER-QA assesses and selects final models.