WebProAnalyst: an interactive tool for analysis of quantitative structure–activity relationships in protein families

WebProAnalyst is a web-accessible analysis tool () designed for scanning quantitative structure–activity relationships in protein families. The tool allows users to search correlations between protein activity and physicochemical characteristics (i.e. hydrophobicity or alpha-helical amphipathicity) in queried sequences. WebProAnalyst uses aligned amino acid sequences and data on protein activity (pK, K(m), ED(50), among others). WebProAnalyst implements methods of the known ProAnalyst package, including the multiple linear regression analysis and the sequence–activity correlation coefficient. In addition, WebProAnalyst incorporates a method based on neural networks. The WebProAnalyst reports a list of sites in protein family, the regression analysis parameters (including correlation values) for the relationships between the amino acid physicochemical characteristics in the site and the protein activity values. WebProAnalyst is useful in search of the amino acid residues that are important for protein function/activity. Furthermore, WebProAnalyst may be helpful in designing the protein-engineering experiments.