Affinity regression predicts the recognition code of nucleic acid binding proteins

Predicting the affinity profiles of nucleic acid-binding proteins directly from the protein sequence is a major unsolved problem. We present a statistical approach for learning the recognition code of a family of transcription factors (TFs) or RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) from high-throughput binding assays. Our method, called affinity regression, trains on protein binding microarray (PBM) or RNA compete experiments to learn an interaction model between proteins and nucleic acids, using only protein domain and probe sequences as inputs. By training on mouse homeodomain PBM profiles, our model correctly identifies residues that confer DNA-binding specificity and accurately predicts binding motifs for an independent set of divergent homeodomains. Similarly, learning from RNA compete profiles for diverse RBPs, our model can predict the binding affinities of held-out proteins and identify key RNA-binding residues. More broadly, we envision applying our method to model and predict biological interactions in any setting where there is a high-throughput ‘affinity’ readout.