Signal-CF: a subsite-coupled and window-fusing approach for predicting signal peptides

Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2007 Jun 8;357(3):633-40. doi: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2007.03.162. Epub 2007 Apr 5.

Abstract

We have developed an automated method for predicting signal peptide sequences and their cleavage sites in eukaryotic and bacterial protein sequences. It is a 2-layer predictor: the 1st-layer prediction engine is to identify a query protein as secretory or non-secretory; if it is secretory, the process will be automatically continued with the 2nd-layer prediction engine to further identify the cleavage site of its signal peptide. The new predictor is called Signal-CF, where C stands for "coupling" and F for "fusion", meaning that Signal-CF is formed by incorporating the subsite coupling effects along a protein sequence and by fusing the results derived from many width-different scaled windows through a voting system. Signal-CF is featured by high success prediction rates with short computational time, and hence is particularly useful for the analysis of large-scale datasets. Signal-CF is freely available as a web-server at http://chou.med.harvard.edu/bioinf/Signal-CF/ or http://202.120.37.186/bioinf/Signal-CF/.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Animals
  • Bacterial Proteins / analysis
  • Bacterial Proteins / genetics
  • Bacterial Proteins / physiology
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Databases, Protein
  • Eukaryotic Cells / metabolism
  • Humans
  • Membrane Proteins / metabolism
  • Models, Biological
  • Protein Sorting Signals*
  • Proteins / analysis*
  • Proteins / genetics
  • Proteins / physiology
  • Serine Endopeptidases / metabolism

Substances

  • Bacterial Proteins
  • Membrane Proteins
  • Protein Sorting Signals
  • Proteins
  • Serine Endopeptidases
  • type I signal peptidase