WeFold: a coopetition for protein structure prediction.

Area of Science:

• Computational Biology
• Structural Biology
• Bioinformatics

Background:

• Protein structure prediction remains a significant challenge in molecular biology.
• Previous methods have yielded only incremental improvements over the past decade.
• The complexity of protein folding necessitates novel approaches.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and evaluate the concept of
• coopetition
• in scientific research, specifically for protein structure prediction and refinement.
• To assess the effectiveness of hybrid protein structure prediction pipelines created through collaboration.
• To identify successes and areas for improvement in a large-scale collaborative research effort.

Main Methods:

• A worldwide collaborative effort, WeFold, involving 13 laboratories was established.
• Participating labs contributed components of their existing protein structure prediction pipelines.
• Hybrid pipelines were created by combining different components and tested during the CASP10 experiment.

Main Results:

• The WeFold experiment demonstrated the feasibility of applying "coopetition" to protein structure prediction.
• Hybrid pipelines showed promise, though specific successes and limitations were identified.
• The initiative generated valuable insights into collaborative model building for complex biological problems.

Conclusions:

• The WeFold initiative represents a novel approach to tackling complex scientific challenges through collaborative competition.
• Further development and refinement of hybrid pipelines are underway.
• Publicly accessible data from WeFold (http://www.wefold.org) will facilitate future research in protein structure prediction.