Sciweavers

BMCBI
2004

Using 3D Hidden Markov Models that explicitly represent spatial coordinates to model and compare protein structures

13 years 9 months ago
Using 3D Hidden Markov Models that explicitly represent spatial coordinates to model and compare protein structures
Background: Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) have proven very useful in computational biology for such applications as sequence pattern matching, gene-finding, and structure prediction. Thus far, however, they have been confined to representing 1D sequence (or the aspects of structure that could be represented by character strings). Results: We develop an HMM formalism that explicitly uses 3D coordinates in its match states. The match states are modeled by 3D Gaussian distributions centered on the mean coordinate position of each alpha carbon in a large structural alignment. The transition probabilities depend on the spread of the neighboring match states and on the number of gaps found in the structural alignment. We also develop methods for aligning query structures against 3D HMMs and scoring the result probabilistically. For 1D HMMs these tasks are accomplished by the Viterbi and forward algorithms. However, these will not work in unmodified form for the 3D problem, due to non-local qu...
Vadim Alexandrov, Mark Gerstein
Added 16 Dec 2010
Updated 16 Dec 2010
Type Journal
Year 2004
Where BMCBI
Authors Vadim Alexandrov, Mark Gerstein
Comments (0)