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BackgroundThe Critical Assessment of Functional Annotation (CAFA) is an ongoing, global, community-driven effort to evaluate and improve the computational annotation of protein function.ResultsHere, we report on the results of the third CAFA challenge, CAFA3, that featured an expanded analysis over the previous CAFA rounds, both in terms of volume of data analyzed and the types of analysis performed. In a novel and major new development, computational predictions and assessment goals drove some of the experimental assays, resulting in new functional annotations for more than 1000 genes. Specifically, we performed experimental whole-genome mutation screening in Candida albicans and Pseudomonas aureginosa genomes, which provided us with genome-wide experimental data for genes associated with biofilm formation and motility. We further performed targeted assays on selected genes in Drosophila melanogaster, which we suspected of being involved in long-term memory.ConclusionWe conclude that while predictions of the molecular function and biological process annotations have slightly improved over time, those of the cellular component have not. Term-centric prediction of experimental annotations remains equally challenging; although the performance of the top methods is significantly better than the expectations set by baseline methods in C. albicans and D. melanogaster, it leaves considerable room and need for improvement. Finally, we report that the CAFA community now involves a broad range of participants with expertise in bioinformatics, biological experimentation, biocuration, and bio-ontologies, working together to improve functional annotation, computational function prediction, and our ability to manage big data in the era of large experimental screens.

Developments in experimental and computational biology are advancing our understanding of how protein sequence variation impacts molecular protein function. However, the leap from the micro level of molecular function to the macro level of the whole organism, e.g. disease, remains barred. Here, we present new results emphasizing earlier work that suggested some links from molecular function to disease. We focused on non-synonymous single nucleotide variants, also referred to as single amino acid variants (SAVs). Building upon OMIA (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals), we introduced a curated set of 117 disease-causing SAVs in animals. Methods optimized to capture effects upon molecular function often correctly predict human (OMIM) and animal (OMIA) Mendelian disease-causing variants. We also predicted effects of human disease-causing variants in the mouse model, i.e. we put OMIM SAVs into mouse orthologs. Overall, fewer variants were predicted with effect in the model organism than in the original organism. Our results, along with other recent studies, demonstrate that predictions of molecular effects capture some important aspects of disease. Thus, in silico methods focusing on the micro level of molecular function can help to understand the macro system level of disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]