Title: An affinity-structure database of helix-turn-helix: DNA complexes with a universal coordinate system

Abstract

Molecular interactions between proteins and DNA molecules underlie many cellular processes, including transcriptional regulation, chromosome replication, and nucleosome positioning. Computational analyses of protein-DNA interactions rely on experimental data characterizing known protein-DNA interactions structurally and biochemically. While many databases exist that contain either structural or biochemical data, few integrate these two data sources in a unified fashion. Such integration is becoming increasingly critical with the rapid growth of structural and biochemical data, and the emergence of algorithms that rely on the synthesis of multiple data types to derive computational models of molecular interactions. We have developed an integrated affinity-structure database in which the experimental and quantitative DNA binding affinities of helix-turn-helix proteins are mapped onto the crystal structures of the corresponding protein-DNA complexes. This database provides access to: (i) protein-DNA structures, (ii) quantitative summaries of protein-DNA binding affinities using position weight matrices, and (iii) raw experimental data of protein-DNA binding instances. Critically, this database establishes a correspondence between experimental structural data and quantitative binding affinity data at the single basepair level. Furthermore, we present a novel alignment algorithm that structurally aligns the protein-DNA complexes in the database and creates a unified residue-level coordinate system for comparing the physico-chemical environments at themore » interface between complexes. Using this unified coordinate system, we compute the statistics of atomic interactions at the protein-DNA interface of helix-turn-helix proteins. We provide an interactive website for visualization, querying, and analyzing this database, and a downloadable version to facilitate programmatic analysis. Lastly, this database will facilitate the analysis of protein-DNA interactions and the development of programmatic computational methods that capitalize on integration of structural and biochemical datasets. The database can be accessed at http://ProteinDNA.hms.harvard.edu.« less

Authors:

AlQuraishi, Mohammed ^[1]; Tang, Shengdong ^[1]; Xia, Xide ^[1]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (United States)

Publication Date:

2015-11-19

Research Org.:

Stanford Univ., CA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC)

OSTI Identifier:

1241035

Grant/Contract Number:  

FG02-05ER64136

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

BMC Bioinformatics

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Volume: 16; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 1471-2105

Publisher:

BioMed Central

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES; protein-DNA; database; helix-turn-helix; transcription factors; structure; PWM