Resources for computational prediction of intrinsic disorder in proteins

Abstract

With over 40 years of research, researchers in the intrinsic disorder prediction field developed over 100 computational predictors. This review offers a holistic perspective of this field by highlighting accurate and popular disorder predictors and introducing a wide range of practical resources that support collection, interpretation and application of disorder predictions. These resources include meta webservers that expedite collection of multiple disorder predictions, large databases of pre-computed disorder predictions that ease collection of predictions particularly for large datasets of proteins, and modern quality assessment tools. The latter methods facilitate identification of accurate predictions in a specific protein sequence, reducing uncertainty associated to the use of the putative disorder. Altogether, we review eleven predictors, four meta webservers, three databases and two quality assessment tools, all of which are conveniently available online. We also offer a perspective on future developments of the disorder prediction and the quality assessment tools. The availability of this comprehensive toolbox of useful resources should stimulate further growth in the application of the disorder predictions across many areas including rational drug design, systems medicine, structural bioinformatics and structural genomics.

Keywords: Intrinsic disorder; Intrinsically disordered proteins; Machine learning; Prediction; Protein function; Webserver.