Rosetta in CASP4: progress in ab initio protein structure prediction

Rosetta ab initio protein structure predictions in CASP4 were considerably more consistent and more accurate than previous ab initio structure predictions. Large segments were correctly predicted (>50 residues superimposed within an RMSD of 6.5 A) for 16 of the 21 domains under 300 residues for which models were submitted. Models with the global fold largely correct were produced for several targets with new folds, and for several difficult fold recognition targets, the Rosetta models were more accurate than those produced with traditional fold recognition models. These promising results suggest that Rosetta may soon be able to contribute to the interpretation of genome sequence information.