Dear colleagues,
As many of you know, the CASP community experiments have been running
once every two years since 1994, collecting information on soon to be
solved structures from the experimental community, and passing on
sequence data 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. The regular CASP experiments
collect target information for a three month season every two years, and
in that period, thanks especially to the structural genomics community,
can acquire over 100 targets, sufficient to evaluate the state of the
art for most types of template based modeling.
There are some classes of target, specifically proteins with novel folds
and membrane proteins, where there are not enough structures solved in
three months to provide sufficient information so the methods can be
fully evaluated. As a consequence, progress is slowed. To address this
problem, with the encouragement of the modeling community, CASP has
launched a rolling mechanism, where we accept targets in these
categories at any time. Of course for that to work we rely on you, the
experimentalists, to provide suitable targets! So we are asking that you
tell us about structures in these categories that are about to be solved
whenever they come up.
For those of you who have not provided targets to CASP before, the
procedure is simple – there is a web page for submitting targets, and a
very experienced staff to deal with any queries. We don’t need the
structure in advance of its release by the PDB, and if we are notified
early enough (a minimum of three weeks before release, more is better)
there need be no delay in structure release.
If you have a suitable target now, we are up and running with 50+
prediction teams already submitting models, and would love to have your
targets. Most important, the modeling community is now in continuous
need of your assistance, so please get in touch whenever an opportunity
arises in the future, and help improve modeling methods.
Thanks,
CASP organizing committee
John Moult, IBBR, University of Maryland, USA
Krzysztof Fidelis, University of California, Davis, USA
Andriy Kryshtafovych, University of California, Davis, USA
Torsten Schwede, University of Basel & SIB, Switzerland
Anna Tramontano, University of Rome, Italy
Get in touch: c...@predictioncenter.org
More information: http://www.predictioncenter.org/casprol/
CASP Roll targets so far:
http://www.predictioncenter.org/casprol/targetlist.cgi
Submit a target:
http://www.predictioncenter.org/casprol/targets_submission.cgi
1. Critical assessment of methods of protein structure prediction
(CASP)--round IX.
Moult J, Fidelis K, Kryshtafovych A, Tramontano A.
Proteins. 2011;79 Suppl 10:1-5. doi: 10.1002/prot.23200. Epub 2011 Oct 14.
2. CASP9 results compared to those of previous CASP experiments.
Kryshtafovych A, Fidelis K, Moult J.
Proteins. 2011;79 Suppl 10:196-207. doi: 10.1002/prot.23182. Epub 2011
Oct 14.
