The cleverSuite approach for protein characterization: predictions of structural properties, solubility, chaperone requirements and RNA-binding abilities.

Abstract

The recent shift towards high-throughput screening is posing new challenges for the interpretation of experimental results. Here we propose the cleverSuite approach for large-scale characterization of protein groups. The central part of the cleverSuite is the cleverMachine (CM), an algorithm that performs statistics on protein sequences by comparing their physico-chemical propensities. The second element is called cleverClassifier and builds on top of the models generated by the CM to allow classification of new datasets. We applied the cleverSuite to predict secondary structure properties, solubility, chaperone requirements and RNA-binding abilities. Using cross-validation and independent datasets, the cleverSuite reproduces experimental findings with great accuracy and provides models that can be used for future investigations. The intuitive interface for dataset exploration, analysis and prediction is available at http://s.tartaglialab.com/clever_suite.