ProbCons

ProbCons is an open source probabilistic consistency-based multiple alignment of amino acid sequences. It is one of the most efficient protein multiple sequence alignment programs, since it has repeatedly demonstrated a statistically significant advantage in accuracy over similar tools, including Clustal and MAFFT.[1][2]

Algorithm

The following describes the basic outline of the ProbCons algorithm.[3]

Step 1: Reliability of an alignment edge

For every pair of sequences compute the probability that letters x i {\displaystyle x_{i}} and y i {\displaystyle y_{i}} are paired in a ∗ {\displaystyle a^{*}} an alignment that is generated by the model.

P ( x i ∼ y i | x , y ) = d e f P r [ x i ∼ y i  in some a  | x , y ] = ∑ alignment a with  x i − y i P r [ a | x , y ] = ∑ alignment a 1 { x i − y i ∈ a } P r [ a | x , y ] {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}P(x_{i}\sim y_{i}|x,y)&{\stackrel {def}{=}}Pr[x_{i}\sim y_{i}{\text{ in some a }}|x,y]\\&=\sum _{{\text{alignment a with }}x_{i}-y_{i}}Pr[a|x,y]\\&=\sum _{\text{alignment a}}\mathbf {1} \{x_{i}-y_{i}\in a\}Pr[a|x,y]\end{aligned}}}

(Where 1 { x i ∼ y i ∈ a } {\displaystyle \mathbf {1} \{x_{i}\sim y_{i}\in a\}} is equal to 1 if x i {\displaystyle x_{i}} and y i {\displaystyle y_{i}} are in the alignment and 0 otherwise.)

Step 2: Maximum expected accuracy

The accuracy of an alignment a ∗ {\displaystyle a^{*}} with respect to another alignment a {\displaystyle a} is defined as the number of common aligned pairs divided by the length of the shorter sequence.

Calculate expected accuracy of each sequence:

E P r [ a | x , y ] ( a c c ( a ∗ , a ) ) = ∑ a P r [ a | x , y ] a c c ( a ∗ , a ) = 1 m i n ( | x | , | y | ) ⋅ ∑ a 1 { x i ∼ y i ∈ a } P r [ a | x , y ] = 1 m i n ( | x | , | y | ) ⋅ ∑ x i − y i P ( x i ∼ y j | x , y ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}E_{Pr[a|x,y]}(acc(a^{*},a))&=\sum _{a}Pr[a|x,y]acc(a^{*},a)\\&={\frac {1}{min(|x|,|y|)}}\cdot \sum _{a}\mathbf {1} \{x_{i}\sim y_{i}\in a\}Pr[a|x,y]\\&={\frac {1}{min(|x|,|y|)}}\cdot \sum _{x_{i}-y_{i}}P(x_{i}\sim y_{j}|x,y)\end{aligned}}}

This yields a maximum expected accuracy (MEA) alignment:

E ( x , y ) = arg ⁡ max a ∗ E P r [ a | x , y ] ( a c c ( a ∗ , a ) ) {\displaystyle E(x,y)=\arg \max _{a^{*}}\;E_{Pr[a|x,y]}(acc(a^{*},a))}

Step 3: Probabilistic Consistency Transformation

All pairs of sequences x,y from the set of all sequences S {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}} are now re-estimated using all intermediate sequences z:

P ′ ( x i − y i | x , y ) = 1 | S | ∑ z ∑ 1 ≤ k ≤ | z | P ( x i ∼ z i | x , z ) ⋅ P ( z i ∼ y i | z , y ) {\displaystyle P'(x_{i}-y_{i}|x,y)={\frac {1}{|{\mathcal {S}}|}}\sum _{z}\sum _{1\leq k\leq |z|}P(x_{i}\sim z_{i}|x,z)\cdot P(z_{i}\sim y_{i}|z,y)}

This step can be iterated.

Step 4: Computation of guide tree

Construct a guide tree by hierarchical clustering using MEA score as sequence similarity score. Cluster similarity is defined using weighted average over pairwise sequence similarity.

Step 5: Compute MSA

Finally compute the MSA using progressive alignment or iterative alignment.

See also

  • Sequence alignment software
  • Clustal
  • MUSCLE
  • AMAP
  • T-Coffee
  • Probalign

References

  1. ^ Do CB, Mahabhashyam MS, Brudno M, Batzoglou S (2005). "PROBCONS: Probabilistic Consistency-based Multiple Sequence Alignment". Genome Research. 15 (2): 330–340. doi:10.1101/gr.2821705. PMC 546535. PMID 15687296.
  2. ^ Roshan, Usman (2014-01-01). "Multiple Sequence Alignment Using Probcons and Probalign". In Russell, David J (ed.). Multiple Sequence Alignment Methods. Methods in Molecular Biology. Vol. 1079. Humana Press. pp. 147–153. doi:10.1007/978-1-62703-646-7_9. ISBN 9781627036450. PMID 24170400.
  3. ^ Lecture "Bioinformatics II" at University of Freiburg

External links

  • Official website