Prediction of protein functional domains from sequences using artificial neural networks

An artificial neural network (ANN) solution is described for the recognitio n of domains in protein sequences. A query sequence Is first compared to a reference database of domain sequences by use Of BLAST and the output data, encoded in the form of six parameters, are forwarded to feed-forward artif icial neural networks with six input and six hidden units with sigmoidal tr ansfer function. The recognition is based on the distribution Of BLAST scor es precomputed for the known domain groups in a database versus database co mparison. Applications to the prediction of function are discussed.