Secondary and Tertiary Structure Prediction of Proteins: A Bioinformatic Approach - Complex System Modelling and Control Through Intelligent Soft Computations - page 550

increasing by each successive CASP meetings. The main goal of CASP is to obtain
an in-depth and objective assessment of the current abilities and inabilities in the
area of protein structure prediction. It critically evaluates the various protein
structure programmes and servers besides assigning ranks for the same. CASP also
tests the prediction accuracy of those protein sequences, whose solved experimental
structures are kept undisclosed until the end of summit. Predictors/participants in
CASP, fall into two categories. The first category comprises of teams of human

participants who devote considerable time, usually a period of several weeks in
order to model each target, to complete their work. The second category involves
automatic servers with a target time period of 48 h for the completion of the
assigned task (Moult 2005 ). Participant registration, target management, prediction
collection and numerical analysis are all handled by the Protein Structure Prediction
Center ( http://predictioncenter.org/ ) . The later also provides access to details of all
experiments and results apart from providing a discussion forum for the CASP
community. CASP also monitors progress in identi

cation of disordered regions in
proteins, and the ability to predict three-dimensional (3D) contacts which can be
used as restraints during tertiary structure prediction of proteins (Moult et al. 2014 ).
Ab initio modeling methods have also improved substantially and now we have
topologically accurate models for small residues (<100 residues) having single
domain non-template proteins due to regular CASP experiments (Kryshtafovych
et al. 2014 ). Homology models vary greatly in accuracy depending on a number of
factors, and for that reason CASP has encouraged the development of methods that
can estimate overall accuracy of a model and accuracy at the individual amino acid
level. The accuracy of homology models monitored by CASP, has improved dra-
matically, through a combination of improved methods. In CASP10, a new “ con-

tact-assisted category has been introduced apart from the already existing previous

categories. The idea in the CASP contact-assisted category is to investigate the
extent to which experimental information is needed in order to deliver a given level
of model accuracy besides encouraging the development of new methods for the
same (Moult et al. 2014 ).
In CASP10 experiment, 114 protein sequences were released as modeling tar-
gets. Among these, 53 were designated

”

(human and server) targets.
Finally 96 experimental structures were available for evaluation and assessment
after cancellation of 18 targets (Moult et al. 2014 ). In CAS10, 217 groups regis-
tered, from several relevant communities. Finally, 41,740 predicted models sub-
mitted by 150 predictor groups were assessed as template-based modeling
predictions where Zhang-Server, QUARK, PMS, Leecon and Zhang groups pro-
vided the most accurate models for the assessment units targets (Huang et al. 2014 ).
Thus, CASP meeting is the best way to keep updated with the advancement in
protein structure prediction strategies and methodologies.
Any development

“ all groups ”

in the field of science is considered important if it has

applications which are of signi cance to biological systems. The following section

deals with various applications of the above discussed methods for protein structure
prediction.