CLICK—topology-independent comparison of biomolecular 3D structures

Our server, CLICK: http://mspc.bii.a-star.edu.sg/click, is capable of superimposing the 3D structures of any pair of biomolecules (proteins, DNA, RNA, etc.). The server makes use of the Cartesian coordinates of the molecules with the option of using other structural features such as secondary structure, solvent accessible surface area and residue depth to guide the alignment. CLICK first looks for cliques of points (3–7 residues) that are structurally similar in the pair of structures to be aligned. Using these local similarities, a one-to-one equivalence is charted between the residues of the two structures. A least square fit then superimposes the two structures. Our method is especially powerful in establishing protein relationships by detecting similarities in structural subdomains, domains and topological variants. CLICK has been extensively benchmarked and compared with other popular methods for protein and RNA structural alignments. In most cases, CLICK alignments were statistically significantly better in terms of structure overlap. The method also recognizes conformational changes that may have occurred in structural domains or subdomains in one structure with respect to the other. For this purpose, the server produces complementary alignments to maximize the extent of detectable similarity. Various examples showcase the utility of our web server.