Computational prediction of MoRFs based on protein sequences and minimax probability machine

Abstract Background Molecular recognition features (MoRFs) are one important type of disordered segments that can promote specific protein-protein interactions. They are located within longer intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), and undergo disorder-to-order transitions upon binding to their interaction partners. The functional importance of MoRFs and the limitation of experimental identification make it necessary to predict MoRFs accurately with computational methods. Results In this study, a new sequence-based method, named as MoRFMPM, is proposed for predicting MoRFs. MoRFMPM uses minimax probability machine (MPM) to predict MoRFs based on 16 features and 3 different windows, which neither relying on other predictors nor calculating the properties of the surrounding regions of MoRFs separately. Comparing with ANCHOR, MoRFpred and MoRFCHiBi on the same test sets, MoRFMPM not only obtains higher AUC, but also obtains higher TPR at low FPR. Conclusions The features used in MoRFMPM can effectively predict MoRFs, especially after preprocessing. Besides, MoRFMPM uses a linear classification algorithm and does not rely on results of other predictors which makes it accessible and repeatable.