A three-state prediction of single point mutations on protein stability changes

A basic question of protein structural studies is to which extent mutations affect the stability. This question may be addressed starting from sequence and/or from structure. In proteomics and genomics studies prediction of protein stability free energy change (DDG) upon single point mutation may also help the annotation process. The experimental SSG values are affected by uncertainty as measured by standard deviations. Most of the DDG values are nearly zero (about 32% of the DDG data set ranges from -0.5 to 0.5 Kcal/mol) and both the value and sign of DDG may be either positive or negative for the same mutation blurring the relationship among mutations and expected DDG value. In order to overcome this problem we describe a new predictor that discriminates between 3 mutation classes: destabilizing mutations (DDG0.5 Kcal/mol) and neutral mutations (-0.5<=DDG<=0.5 Kcal/mol). In this paper a support vector machine starting from the protein sequence or structure discriminates between stabilizing, destabilizing and neutral mutations. We rank all the possible substitutions according to a three state classification system and show that the overall accuracy of our predictor is as high as 52% when performed starting from sequence information and 58% when the protein structure is available, with a mean value correlation coefficient of 0.30 and 0.39, respectively. These values are about 20 points per cent higher than those of a random predictor.