Summary: CASP is soliciting target proteins for structure prediction - specifically proteins with new folds, membrane proteins, disordered proteins, oligomers, complexes, and multi-domain proteins. Call for targets: ============= As many of you know, CASP (Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction) has been assessing the state of the art in modeling protein structure from sequence since 1994, running a community experiment once every two years. In these experiments, information on soon to be solved structures is collected from the experimental community, and the sequence data are passed to the structure modeling community so that blind predictions of structure can be collected and assessed (1). Over that period CASP has seen enormous progress in the quality of modeled structures (2), but many problems remain. CASP is only possible because of the generous participation of the experimental community in providing the modeling targets (3). The prediction season for the next full biannual experiment, CASP 11, begins May 1, and so we are now asking for your help in reaching our goal of releasing at least varied 100 targets in a the three-month period. We need all sorts of targets, spanning the categories below: 1. (More than ever) novel folds and membrane protein targets. Even with the extended collection season provided by CASP ROLL, there will be still a shortage. There are some interesting methods developments for ab initio modeling, and it is important to be able to decisively evaluate their effectiveness. 2. Oligomers, complexes, and multi-domain proteins: This round, CASP has entered collaboration with CAPRI for specifically assessing the accuracy of predictions of protein-interactions and relative domain orientation. 3. Targets containing significant amounts of disordered structure, so as to test the ability of methods to identify these regions. We are especially interested in targets where disorder has been directly characterized experimentally, e.g. by NMR. 4. A diversity of comparative modeling targets. Cases where there is fairly high sequence identity (30-50%) between the target structure and an available template are valuable for testing the degree to which model accuracy can approach that of experiment, particularly in functionally critical regions. Cases with lower sequence identity to template, right down to undetectable, are valuable for testing the ability of the methods to detect remote homologs, to overcome challenging alignment difficulties, to make use of multiple templates, and to build regions of the structure not obviously available from a template. 5. Some targets will also be used to test methods of structure refinement. In these cases, the best model received for a target will be released to the refinement community, who will subsequently submit new models. This too is an area where there have been some exciting developments in the last year, so we are hoping for significant progress. Refinement targets are selected based on the nature of the errors in the initial models. Because of the extended process, these targets need to be available for longer before release of the experimental structure. Procedure ========= For those of you who have not provided targets to CASP before, the procedure is simple. There are three ways to submit targets: (1) Go the target submission web page and fill in the easy form; (2) When you submit your co-ordinates to the PDB, tick the 'CASP HOLD' box, automatically setting up a target entry; (3) Send an email the prediction center with details. If you have queries, there is very experienced prediction center staff to deal with them. The key thing is timing: We need a window of at least four weeks between receiving information about a target and the release of your experimental structure. A longer window - up to eight weeks - is often useful, for example so that a target can be used to test refinement methods, but is not essential (note that using the PDB target submission route automatically selects eight weeks). We don't need your experimental structure in advance of its release by the PDB, provided that will happen by the end of August. Please consult the target submission page for more details: http://www.predictioncenter.org/casp11/targets_submission.cgi There are already many prediction teams signed for CASP 11, and so any targets provided will receive plenty of attention. If you have a suitable target now, we are ready to receive it. If new targets come up before mid of July, we would also love to have them. (After July, we will continue with CASP ROLL for novel folds, disordered proteins, and membrane proteins). So please get in touch whenever a suitable opportunity arises, and help improve modeling methods. Thanks, CASP organizing committee John Moult, IBBR, University of Maryland, USA Anna Tramontano, University of Rome, Italy Krzysztof Fidelis, University of California, Davis, USA Andriy Kryshtafovych, University of California, Davis, USA Torsten Schwede, SIB & Biozentrum University of Basel, Switzerland References ========= 1. Moult, John; Fidelis, Krzysztof; Kryshtafovych, Andriy; Schwede, Torsten; Tramontano, Anna (2014). Critical assessment of methods of protein structure prediction (CASP) - round X. Proteins, 82(S2), 1-6. 2. Kryshtafovych A, Fidelis K, Moult J. (2014) CASP10 results compared to those of previous CASP experiments. Proteins. 82 (S2):164-174. 3. Kryshtafovych, Andriy; Moult, John; Bales, Patrick; Bazan, J Fernando; Biasini, Marco; Burgin, Alex; Chen, Chen; Cochran, Frank V; Craig, Timothy K; Das, Rhiju; Fass, Deborah; Garcia-Doval, Carmela; Herzberg, Osnat; Lorimer, Donald; Luecke, Hartmut; Ma, Xiaolei; Nelson, Daniel C; van Raaij, Mark J; Rohwer, Forest; Segall, Anca; Seguritan, Victor; Zeth, Kornelius; Schwede, Torsten (2014). Challenging the state-of-the-art in protein structure prediction: Highlights of experimental target structures for the 10(th) Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction Experiment CASP10. Proteins, 82(S2), 26-42. Get in touch: [email protected] More information: http://www.predictioncenter.org/casp11/ Submit a target: http://www.predictioncenter.org/casp11/targets_submission.cgi