Functional site prediction selects correct protein models

BACKGROUND: The prediction of protein structure can be facilitated by the use of constraints based on a knowledge of functional sites. Without this information it is still possible to predict which residues are likely to be part of a functional site and this information can be used to select model structures from a variety of alternatives that would correspond to a functional protein. RESULTS: Using a large collection of protein-like decoy models, a score was devised that selected those with predicted functional site residues that formed a cluster. When tested on a variety of small α/β/α type proteins, including enzymes and non-enzymes, those that corresponded to the native fold were ranked highly. This performance held also for a selection of larger α/β/α proteins that played no part in the development of the method. CONCLUSION: The use of predicted site positions provides a useful filter to discriminate native-like protein models from non-native models. The method can be applied to any collection of models and should provide a useful aid to all modelling methods from ab initio to homology based approaches.