DISCO: A New Algorithm for Detecting 3D Protein Structure Similarity

Abstract

Abstract. Protein structure similarity is one of the most important aims pursued by bioinformatics and structural biology, nowadays. Although quite a few similarity methods have been proposed lately, yet fresh algorithms that fulfill new preconditions are needed to serve this purpose. In this paper, we provide a new similarity measure for 3D protein structures that detects not only similar structures but also similar substructures to a query protein, supporting both multiple and pairwise comparison procedures and combining many comparison characteristics. In order to handle similarity queries we utilize efficient and effective indexing techniques such as M-trees and we provide interesting results using real, previously tested protein data sets.