PPIDD: an extraction and visualisation method of biological protein-protein interfaces

Biochimie. 2008 Apr;90(4):640-7. doi: 10.1016/j.biochi.2007.11.008. Epub 2007 Nov 28.

Abstract

Today, the information for generating reliable protein-protein complex datasets is not directly accessible from PDB structures. Moreover, in X-ray protein structures, different types of contacts can be observed between proteins: contacts in homodimers or inside heterocomplexes considered to be specific, and contacts induced by crystallogenesis processes, considered to be non-specific. However, none of the databases giving access to protein-protein complexes allows the crystallographic interfaces to be distinguished from the biological interfaces. For this reason we developed PPIDD (Protein-Protein Interface Description Database), an innovative tool, which allows the extraction and visualisation of biological protein-protein interfaces from an annotated subset of crystallographic structures of proteins. This tool is focused on the description of protein-protein interfaces corresponding to well-identified classes of protein assemblies. It permits the representation of any of these protein-protein assemblies (duplex) and their interfaces as well as the export of the corresponding molecular structures under a flexible format, which is an extension of the PDBML. Moreover, PPIDD facilitates the construction of subsets of interfaces presenting user-specified common characteristics, to enhance the understanding of the determinants of specific protein-protein interactions.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Crystallography, X-Ray
  • Databases, Protein*
  • Information Storage and Retrieval / methods*
  • Internet
  • Models, Molecular
  • Protein Conformation*
  • Protein Interaction Mapping
  • Proteins / chemistry*
  • Sequence Analysis, Protein
  • User-Computer Interface*

Substances

  • Proteins