Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 24, 2025

Author Spotlight: A Computational Approach to Decipher Amino Acid Preferences in Multispecific Protein-Protein Interactions
Published on: January 26, 2024
ProBiS-Fold Approach for Annotation of Human Structures from the AlphaFold Database with No Corresponding Structure
1Theory Department, National Institute of Chemistry, Hajdrihova 19, SI-1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Abstract:
ProBiS (Protein Binding Sites), a local structure-based comparison algorithm, is used in the new ProBiS-Fold web server to annotate human structures from the AlphaFold database without a corresponding structure in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) to discover new druggable binding sites. The ProBiS algorithm is used to compare each query protein structure predicted by the AlphaFold approach with the protein structures from the PDB to identify similarities between known binding sites found in the PDB and yet unknown binding sites in the AlphaFold database. Ligands bound in these identified similar PDB sites are then transferred to each query protein from the AlphaFold database, and binding sites are identified as ligand clusters on an AlphaFold protein. Small molecule binding sites are assigned druggability scores based on the similarity of their ligands to known drugs, allowing them to be ranked according to their perceived and actual potential for drug development. ProBiS-Fold provides interactive and downloadable binding sites for the entire human structural proteome, including more than 3000 new druggable binding sites that have no corresponding structure in the PDB, taking into account AlphaFold's model quality, to enable protein structure-function relationship studies and pharmaceutical drug discovery research. The web server is freely accessible to academic users at http://probis-fold.insilab.org.
Related Concept Videos
Conserved Binding Sites
Binding sites are often located in large pockets, and if their location on a protein’s surface is unknown, it can be predicted using various approaches. The energetic method computationally...
Protein-protein Interfaces
Protein Organization
The primary structure of a protein is its amino acid sequence....
Globular and Fibrous Proteins
Globular proteins are also known as spheroproteins and typically are approximately round in shape. They contain a mix of amino acid types and contain differing sequences in their primary structures. Globular proteins have many different functions, such as enzymes, cellular messengers, and molecular transporters. These roles often require the proteins to be...
Ligand Binding and Linkage
Ligand Binding Sites
Protein-ligand interactions are quite specific; even though numerous potential ligands surround a cellular protein at any given time, only a particular ligand can bind to that protein. Moreover, a ligand binds only to a dedicated area on the surface of the protein, known as the...

