VAST

VAST identifies protein structural neighbors by performing structure-structure similarity searches and alignments to reveal distant evolutionary relationships and potential functional properties.

Key Features:

• Efficient similarity-search algorithms: VAST employs fast similarity-search algorithms for structure-structure search and alignment to enable rapid comparisons.
• Comprehensive database-scale comparisons: VAST conducts comparisons across all publicly available protein structures.
• Systematic structural comparison and statistical assessment: VAST systematically compares protein structures and identifies statistically significant similarities that may indicate evolutionary relationships or shared functions.
• Convergence on effective approaches: VAST implements methodologies that align with approaches developed by multiple research groups for structure-comparison problems.

Scientific Applications:

• Evolutionary Biology: Reveals distant evolutionary relationships between proteins through structure-structure comparisons.
• Functional Genomics: Identifies unsuspected functional properties by relating proteins to structural neighbors, supporting new functional hypotheses.
• Structural Biology: Aids annotation of unknown protein structures by relating them to known structures and families.

Methodology:

Performs structure-structure search and alignment using fast similarity-search algorithms to compare query structures against all publicly available protein structures and identify statistically significant similarities.