TarO

TarO facilitates selection and analysis of proteins and protein domains to optimize targets for structural biology studies.

Key Features:

• Extensive Sequence Analysis: Employs 17 distinct algorithms to analyze protein sequences.
• Database Comparisons: Compares input sequences against eight curated databases.
• Homologue Identification: Identifies putative homologues, including orthologues.
• Property Predictions: Predicts crystallization propensity, protein disorder, and post-translational modifications.
• Output Formats: Produces tabulated results and annotated multiple sequence alignments (MSAs).
• Distributed Annotation System Integration: Acquires additional annotations via the Distributed Annotation System and links MSA annotations to Dasty2 and Jalview.
• Information Gateways: Provides routes to UniProt, COG, and the Conserved Domains Database.
• High-Performance Computing: Conducts analyses on a high-performance computing cluster.
• Integrated Results Storage: Integrates and stores results in a database.

Scientific Applications:

• Structural Target Selection: Prioritizes proteins and protein domains for structural biology experiments.
• Structural Proteomics: Supports rational target selection in structural proteomics projects.
• Evolutionary and Functional Inference: Enables analysis of evolutionary relationships and functional conservation through homologue and orthologue identification.
• Experimental Prioritization: Informs prioritization for experimental work using predictions of crystallization propensity, disorder, and post-translational modifications.

Methodology:

Analyses employ 17 algorithms and comparisons to eight curated databases to identify homologues (including orthologues) and predict crystallization propensity, protein disorder, and post-translational modifications; computations run on a high-performance computing cluster, results are integrated and stored in a database, and outputs are provided as tabulated data and annotated MSAs with integration to Jalview and annotation retrieval via the Distributed Annotation System (Dasty2).