Detection of transmembrane regions in protein sequences

摘要

A method of identifying probable transmembrane domains in a polypeptide comprising the steps of: communicating signals that are indicative of an amino acid sequence of the polypeptide to a processing means; generating an array (H) of amino acid trait scores from said sequence wherein each such trait scores is related to the likelihood of each corresponding amino acid in said sequence being within a cell membrane; communicating signals that are indicative of said array H to a Type Analyser that generates an array (M) of membrane-associated scores; wherein such score is related to the likelihood of a corresponding amino acid and its neighbours being associated with a transmembrane region of a cell; communicating signals that are indicative of said array H to a Transition Analyser, that generates an array (T) of transition-associated scores from said array H; wherein each such score is related to the likelihood of a corresponding amino acid and its neighbours being associated with a region of a polypeptide being located at a transition between a transmembrane region and a non-transmembrane region of a cell; communicating signals that are indicative of said arrays M and T to a Combining Algorithm, that generates an array (P) wherein each such score being indicative of the likelihood of the corresponding amino acid being located within a transmembrane region of a cell.