Bioinformatics on β-Barrel Membrane Proteins: Sequence and Structural Analysis, Discrimination and Prediction.

The analysis on the amino acid sequences of transmembrane beta barrel proteins (TMBs) provides deep insights about their structure and function. We found that the occurrence of Ser, Asn and Gln is significantly higher in TMBs than globular proteins, which might be due to their importance in the formation of β-barrel structures in the membrane, stability of binding pockets and the function of TMBs. Utilizing this information, we have devised statistical methods and machine learning techniques to discriminate TMBs from other folding types of globular and membrane proteins and we obtained the maximum accuracy of 96%. Further, we have devised protocols for identifying the membrane spanning β-strand segments and detecting TMBs in genomic sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]