Prediction of protein structural classes and subcellular locations

The structural class and subcellular location are the two important features of proteins that are closely related to their biological functions. With the rapid increase in new protein sequences entering into data banks, it is highly desirable to develop a fast and accurate method for predicting the attributes of these features for them. This can expedite the functionality determination of new proteins and the process of prioritizing genes and proteins identified by genomics efforts as potential molecular targets for drug design. Various prediction methods have been developed during the last two decades. This review is devoted to presenting a systematic introduction and comparison of the existing methods in respect to the prediction algorithm and classification scheme. The attention is focused on the state-of-the-art, which is featured by the covarient-discriminant algorithm developed very recently, as well as some new classification schemes for protein structural classes and subcellular locations. Particularly, addressed are also the physical chemistry foundation of the existing prediction methods, and the essence why the covariant-discriminant algorithm is so powerful.