M-DeepAssembly: enhanced DeepAssembly based on multi-objective multi-domain protein conformation sampling

Abstract Background Association and cooperation among structural domains play an important role in protein function and drug design. Despite remarkable advancements in highly accurate single-domain protein structure prediction through the collaborative efforts of the community using deep learning, c...

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Main Authors: Xinyue Cui, Yuhao Xia, Minghua Hou, Xuanfeng Zhao, Suhui Wang, Guijun Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2025-05-01
Series:BMC Bioinformatics
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-025-06131-2
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author Xinyue Cui
Yuhao Xia
Minghua Hou
Xuanfeng Zhao
Suhui Wang
Guijun Zhang
author_facet Xinyue Cui
Yuhao Xia
Minghua Hou
Xuanfeng Zhao
Suhui Wang
Guijun Zhang
author_sort Xinyue Cui
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Background Association and cooperation among structural domains play an important role in protein function and drug design. Despite remarkable advancements in highly accurate single-domain protein structure prediction through the collaborative efforts of the community using deep learning, challenges still exist in predicting multi-domain protein structures when the evolutionary signal for a given domain pair is weak or the protein structure is large. Results To alleviate the above challenges, we proposed M-DeepAssembly, a protocol based on multi-objective protein conformation sampling algorithm for multi-domain protein structure prediction. Firstly, the inter-domain interactions and full-length sequence distance features are extracted through DeepAssembly and AlphaFold2, respectively. Secondly, subject to these features, we constructed a multi-objective energy model and designed a sampling algorithm for exploring and exploiting conformational space to generate ensembles. Finally, the output protein structure was selected from the ensembles using our in-house developed model quality assessment algorithm. On the test set of 164 multi-domain proteins, the results show that the average TM-score of M-DeepAssembly is 15.4% and 2.0% higher than AlphaFold2 and DeepAssembly, respectively. It is worth noting that there are models with higher accuracy in ensembles, achieving an improvement of 20.3% and 6.4% relative to the two baseline methods, although these models were not selected. Furthermore, when compared to the prediction results of AlphaFold2 for CASP15 multi-domain targets, M-DeepAssembly demonstrates certain performance advantages. Conclusions M-DeepAssembly provides a distinctive multi-domain protein assembly algorithm, which can alleviate the current challenges of weak evolutionary signals and large structures to some extent by forming diverse ensembles using multi-objective protein conformation sampling algorithm. The proposed method contributes to exploring the functions of multi-domain proteins, especially providing new insights into targets with multiple conformational states.
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spelling doaj-art-1b66caad742b40ffbcf281c2cfbb12702025-08-20T03:53:14ZengBMCBMC Bioinformatics1471-21052025-05-0126111310.1186/s12859-025-06131-2M-DeepAssembly: enhanced DeepAssembly based on multi-objective multi-domain protein conformation samplingXinyue Cui0Yuhao Xia1Minghua Hou2Xuanfeng Zhao3Suhui Wang4Guijun Zhang5College of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of TechnologyCollege of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of TechnologyCollege of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of TechnologyCollege of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of TechnologyCollege of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of TechnologyCollege of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of TechnologyAbstract Background Association and cooperation among structural domains play an important role in protein function and drug design. Despite remarkable advancements in highly accurate single-domain protein structure prediction through the collaborative efforts of the community using deep learning, challenges still exist in predicting multi-domain protein structures when the evolutionary signal for a given domain pair is weak or the protein structure is large. Results To alleviate the above challenges, we proposed M-DeepAssembly, a protocol based on multi-objective protein conformation sampling algorithm for multi-domain protein structure prediction. Firstly, the inter-domain interactions and full-length sequence distance features are extracted through DeepAssembly and AlphaFold2, respectively. Secondly, subject to these features, we constructed a multi-objective energy model and designed a sampling algorithm for exploring and exploiting conformational space to generate ensembles. Finally, the output protein structure was selected from the ensembles using our in-house developed model quality assessment algorithm. On the test set of 164 multi-domain proteins, the results show that the average TM-score of M-DeepAssembly is 15.4% and 2.0% higher than AlphaFold2 and DeepAssembly, respectively. It is worth noting that there are models with higher accuracy in ensembles, achieving an improvement of 20.3% and 6.4% relative to the two baseline methods, although these models were not selected. Furthermore, when compared to the prediction results of AlphaFold2 for CASP15 multi-domain targets, M-DeepAssembly demonstrates certain performance advantages. Conclusions M-DeepAssembly provides a distinctive multi-domain protein assembly algorithm, which can alleviate the current challenges of weak evolutionary signals and large structures to some extent by forming diverse ensembles using multi-objective protein conformation sampling algorithm. The proposed method contributes to exploring the functions of multi-domain proteins, especially providing new insights into targets with multiple conformational states.https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-025-06131-2Protein structure predictionMulti-domain protein assemblyMulti-objective energy modelConformation sampling
spellingShingle Xinyue Cui
Yuhao Xia
Minghua Hou
Xuanfeng Zhao
Suhui Wang
Guijun Zhang
M-DeepAssembly: enhanced DeepAssembly based on multi-objective multi-domain protein conformation sampling
BMC Bioinformatics
Protein structure prediction
Multi-domain protein assembly
Multi-objective energy model
Conformation sampling
title M-DeepAssembly: enhanced DeepAssembly based on multi-objective multi-domain protein conformation sampling
title_full M-DeepAssembly: enhanced DeepAssembly based on multi-objective multi-domain protein conformation sampling
title_fullStr M-DeepAssembly: enhanced DeepAssembly based on multi-objective multi-domain protein conformation sampling
title_full_unstemmed M-DeepAssembly: enhanced DeepAssembly based on multi-objective multi-domain protein conformation sampling
title_short M-DeepAssembly: enhanced DeepAssembly based on multi-objective multi-domain protein conformation sampling
title_sort m deepassembly enhanced deepassembly based on multi objective multi domain protein conformation sampling
topic Protein structure prediction
Multi-domain protein assembly
Multi-objective energy model
Conformation sampling
url https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-025-06131-2
work_keys_str_mv AT xinyuecui mdeepassemblyenhanceddeepassemblybasedonmultiobjectivemultidomainproteinconformationsampling
AT yuhaoxia mdeepassemblyenhanceddeepassemblybasedonmultiobjectivemultidomainproteinconformationsampling
AT minghuahou mdeepassemblyenhanceddeepassemblybasedonmultiobjectivemultidomainproteinconformationsampling
AT xuanfengzhao mdeepassemblyenhanceddeepassemblybasedonmultiobjectivemultidomainproteinconformationsampling
AT suhuiwang mdeepassemblyenhanceddeepassemblybasedonmultiobjectivemultidomainproteinconformationsampling
AT guijunzhang mdeepassemblyenhanceddeepassemblybasedonmultiobjectivemultidomainproteinconformationsampling