PROFacc

PROFacc predicts structural and functional features from amino-acid sequences to support protein sequence analysis.

Key Features:

• Secondary structure prediction: predicts α-helices, β-strands/sheets, and coil regions.
• Solvent accessibility prediction: estimates residue exposure to solvent to indicate likely surface and interaction regions.
• Transmembrane helices (TMSEG): identifies segments likely embedded in membranes.
• Strand and coiled-coil detection: detects β-strand propensity and coiled-coil motifs relevant to stability and assembly.
• Disulfide bond and disorder prediction: predicts stabilizing disulfide linkages and intrinsically disordered segments.
• Evolutionary conservation (ConSurf): highlights putatively functional regions via conservation across homologous sequences.
• Gene Ontology inference (metastudent): infers biological process, cellular component, and molecular function GO terms from sequence homology.
• Subcellular localization (LocTree3): predicts the most likely cellular compartment or localization of a protein.
• Protein–protein binding site prediction (ISIS2): predicts candidate interaction interfaces for protein partners.
• Protein–polynucleotide binding site prediction (SomeNA): predicts regions likely to bind DNA or RNA.
• Mutation impact analysis (SNAP2): estimates the functional impact of amino-acid substitutions, including non-synonymous variants (nsSNPs).

Scientific Applications:

• Structural biology: supports hypothesis generation for folding, stability, and structural motifs.
• Functional genomics: aids annotation of gene products and inference of biological roles.
• Drug discovery: identifies candidate interaction sites and potential target regions.
• Variant interpretation: prioritizes amino-acid substitutions with likely functional impact.

Methodology:

Integrates multiple computational methods and specialized predictors into a single meta-analysis workflow, combining outputs across tools to provide a cross-validated view of sequence-derived structural and functional properties.