Sequence-based prediction of protein-protein interactions by means of codon usage

Abstract

We introduce a novel approach to predict interaction of two proteins solely by analyzing their coding sequences. We found that similarity in codon usage is a strong predictor of protein-protein interactions and, for high specificity values, is as sensitive as the most powerful current prediction methods. Furthermore, combining codon usage with other predictors results in a 75% increase in sensitivity at a precision of 50%, compared to prediction without considering codon usage. © 2008 Najafabadi and Salavati; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.