Computational Approach to Structural Analysis of Protein-RNA Complexes

Analyzing protein-RNA binding structures depends on a significant quantity of manual work. Therefore, the protein-RNA binding structures are generally studied individually or on a small-scale. The task of analyzing the protein-RNA binding structures manually becomes increasingly difficult as the complexity and number of protein-RNA binding structures increase. We have developed a set of algorithms for automatically analyzing the structures of the protein-RNA complexes at an atomic level and for identifying the interaction patterns between the protein and RNA. The algorithms were implemented and tested on the actual structure data of 51 protein-RNA complexes. It is believed that this is the first structural analysis of a large set of protein-RNA complexes. The results of the analysis will provide insight into the interaction patterns between a protein and RNA, and will be useful in predicting the structure of the RNA binding protein and the structure of the protein binding RNA.