Target selection

As part of the NIH funded PSI-2 project, the NESG dedicates 70% of its resources to the determination of targeted families selected by the PSI BIG, 30% to targets nominated by the academic community and 30% to its own biomedically oriented projects such as key proteins in Human cancer interaction networks and bacterial lipoproteins.

Throughout PSI-2, protein families proposed by the PSI BIG group have been selected by the PSI-2 large scale centers via a lottery system overseen by the PSI BIG group. Members of protein families selected by the BIG group are studied by the large scale centers prior to family selection and each center proposes families that they wish to pursue. The PSI BIG group resolves conflicts where more than one large scale center proposes to study the same protein family.

Before selecting a protein family, the NESG evaluates family members with a number of predictors:

• Pxs
• signalP
• lipoP
• TMHMM
• PredictProtein
• disopred2

Results of PSI-2 protein family drafts:

• Draft pick of 1369 Pfam families (Oct 2005)
• Draft pick of 397 BIG families (Apr 2006)
• Draft pick of 460 BIG families (Aug 2006)
• Draft pick of 602 BIG families (Nov 2006)
• Selection of 3 small MEGA families (March 2007)
• First round draft pick of p-loop super MEGA (May 2007)
• Second round draft pick of p-loop super MEGA (June 2007)
• First round META genome draft pick (June 2007)
• Selection of 4 small MEGA families (June 2007)
• Draft selection of 4 mid size MEGA families (Dec 2007)
  
• Draft pick of NAD(P)-binding Rossmann domain (Dec 2007)
• Draft pick of Aldolase Class I (Dec 2007)
• Draft pick of VP39 (Dec 2007)
• Draft pick of 1000 MEGA modeling families (250/center) (May 2008)
• Draft pick of 136 META HMM families (34/center) (July 2008)
• Draft pick of 1000 MEGA modeling families (250/center) (July 2008)