Predicting protein-binding sites in nucleic acids

초록

Interactions between protein and nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) molecules are essential for a variety of cellular processes. A large amount of interaction data generated by experimental technologies have triggered the development of several computational methods. Most computational methods have focused on predicting binding sites in a sequence or on determining whether an interaction exists between a pair of protein and nucleic acid sequences. Regarding the problem of predicting binding sites between proteins and nucleic acids, many existing computational methods are limited to finding nucleic acid binding sites in proteins instead of protein-binding sites in nucleic acids. Compared to the problem of predicting nucleic acid binding sites in proteins, predicting protein-binding sites in nucleic acids is more challenging for several reasons. In this article, the existing computational methods for predicting protein-binding sites in nucleic acids and future directions in predicting protein-binding sites in nucleic acids have been reviewed. © 2020 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.