Accurate prediction of protein-nucleic acid complexes using RoseTTAFoldNA

Nat Methods. 2024 Jan;21(1):117-121. doi: 10.1038/s41592-023-02086-5. Epub 2023 Nov 23.

Abstract

Protein-RNA and protein-DNA complexes play critical roles in biology. Despite considerable recent advances in protein structure prediction, the prediction of the structures of protein-nucleic acid complexes without homology to known complexes is a largely unsolved problem. Here we extend the RoseTTAFold machine learning protein-structure-prediction approach to additionally predict nucleic acid and protein-nucleic acid complexes. We develop a single trained network, RoseTTAFoldNA, that rapidly produces three-dimensional structure models with confidence estimates for protein-DNA and protein-RNA complexes. Here we show that confident predictions have considerably higher accuracy than current state-of-the-art methods. RoseTTAFoldNA should be broadly useful for modeling the structure of naturally occurring protein-nucleic acid complexes, and for designing sequence-specific RNA and DNA-binding proteins.

MeSH terms

  • DNA / chemistry
  • DNA-Binding Proteins / chemistry
  • Nucleic Acids*
  • RNA / chemistry

Substances

  • Nucleic Acids
  • RNA
  • DNA-Binding Proteins
  • DNA