Abstract
The protein structure prediction problem is one of the most (if not the most) important problem in computational biology. This problem consists of finding the conformation of a protein (i.e., a sequence of amino-acids) with minimal energy. Because of the complexity of this problem, simplified models like Dill’s HP-lattice model [12] have become a major tool for investigating general properties of protein folding. Even for this simplified model, the structure prediction problem has been shown to be NP-complete [3, 5].
We describe a constraint formulation of the HP-model structure prediction problem, present the basic constraints and search strategy. We then introduce a novel, general technique for excluding geometrical symmetries in constraint programming. To our knowledge, this is the first general and declarative technique for excluding symmetries in constraint programming that can be added to an existing implementation. Finally, we describe a new lower bound on the energy of an HP-protein. Both techniques yield an efficient pruning of the search tree.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
V. I. Abkevich, A. M. Gutin, and E. I. Shakhnovich. Impact of local and nonlocal interactions on thermodynamics and kinetics of protein folding. Journal of Molecular Biology, 252:460–471, 1995.
V.I. Abkevich, A.M. Gutin, and E.I. Shakhnovich. Computer simulations of prebiotic evolution. In Russ B. Altman, A. Keith Dunker, Lawrence Hunter, and Teri E. Klein, editors, PSB’97, pages 27–38, 1997.
B. Berger and T. Leighton. Protein folding in the hydrophobic-hydrophilic (HP) modell is NP-complete. In Proc. of the RECOMB’98, pages 30–39, 1998.
Erich Bornberg-Bauer. Chain growth algorithms for HP-type lattice proteins. In Proc. of the 1 st Annual International Conference on Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB), pages 47–55. ACM Press, 1997.
P. Crescenzi, D. Goldman, C. Papadimitriou, A. Piccolboni, and M. Yannakakis. On the complexity of protein folding. In Proc. of STOC, 1998. To appear. Short version in Proc. of RECOMB’98, pages 61–62.
K.A. Dill, S. Bromberg, K. Yue, K.M. Fiebig, D.P. Yee, P.D. Thomas, and H.S. Chan. Principles of protein folding-a perspective of simple exact models. Protein Science, 4:561–602, 1995.
Ken A. Dill, Klaus M. Fiebig, and Hue Sun Chan. Cooperativity in protein-folding kinetics. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 90:1942–1946, 1993.
Aaron R. Dinner, Andreaj šali, and Martin Karplus. The folding mechanism of larger model proteins: Role of native structure. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 93:8356–8361, 1996.
S. Govindarajan and R. A. Goldstein. The foldability landscape of model proteins. Biopolymers, 42(4):427–438, 1997.
William E. Hart and Sorin C. Istrail. Fast protein folding in the hydrophobid-hydrophilic model within three-eighths of optimal. Journal of omputational Biology, 3(1):53–96, 1996.
David A. Hinds and Michael Levitt. From structure to sequence and back again. Journal of Molecular Biology, 258:201–209, 1996.
Kit Fun Lau and Ken A. Dill. A lattice statistical mechanics model of the conformational and sequence spaces of proteins. Macromolecules, 22:3986–3997, 1989.
Angel R. Ortiz, Andrzej Kolinski, and Jeffrey Skolnick. Combined multiple sequence reduced protein model approach to predict the tertiary structure of small proteins. In Russ B. Altman, A. Keith Dunker, Lawrence Hunter, and Teri E. Klein, editors, PSB’98, volume 3, pages 375–386, 1998.
Gert Smolka. The Oz programming model. In Jan van Leeuwen, editor, Computer Science Today, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1000, pages 324–343. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1995.
R. Unger and J. Moult. Genetic algorithms for protein folding simulations. Journal of Molecular Biology, 231:75–81, 1993.
Ron Unger and John Moult. Local interactions dominate folding in a simple protein model. Journal of Molecular Biology, 259:988–994, 1996.
A. šali, E. Shakhnovich, and M. Karplus. Kinetics of protein folding. Journal of Molecular Biology, 235:1614–1636, 1994.
Kaizhi Yue and Ken A. Dill. Sequence-structure relationships in proteins and copolymers. Physical Review E, 48(3):2267–2278, September 1993.
Kaizhi Yue and Ken A. Dill. Forces of tertiary structural organization in globular proteins. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 92:146–150, 1995.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Backofen, R. (1998). Constraint Techniques for Solving the Protein Structure Prediction Problem. In: Maher, M., Puget, JF. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming — CP98. CP 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1520. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49481-2_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49481-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65224-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49481-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive