Protein Domain Boundary Predictions: A Structural Biology Perspective

Kirillova, Svetlana; Kumar, Suresh; Carugo, Oliviero

To predict, on the basis of the protein length, that a protein contains one domain or it is a multi-domain construct, a threshold value can be used. If the protein is longer than the threshold value it consists of more than one domain. On the contrary, a protein, smaller than this threshold value, would be predicted to contain only a single domain. Consequently, a true positive (tp) is defined as a multi-domain protein, which is correctly predicted to be a multi-domain protein; a multi-domain protein that is predicted to contain a single domain is defined a false negative (fn); a single-domain protein predicted to be a multi-domain protein is defined a false positive (fp); and a correctly predicted single-domain protein is defined a true negative (tn).