Bioinformatics Approaches for Understanding the Binding Affinity of Protein–Nucleic Acid Complexes
摘要
Protein–nucleic acid interactions are involved in various biological processes such as gene expression, replication, transcription, translation, and packaging. Understanding the recognition mechanism of the protein–nucleic acid complexes has been investigated from different perspectives, including the binding affinities of protein–DNA and protein–RNA complexes. Experimentally, protein–nucleic acid interactions are analyzed using X-ray crystallography, Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC), DNA/RNA pull-down assays, DNA/RNA footprinting, and systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX). On the other hand, numerous databases and computational tools have been developed to study protein–nucleic acid complexes based on their binding sites, specific interactions between them, and binding affinity. In this chapter, we discuss various databases for protein–nucleic acid complex structures and the tools available to extract features from them. Further, we provide details on databases and prediction methods reported for exploring the binding affinity of protein–nucleic acid complexes along with important structure-based parameters, which govern the binding affinity.