DeepAc4C: A convolutional neural network model with hybrid features composed of physicochemical patterns and distributed representation information for identification of N4-acetylcytidine in mRNA

Motivation N4-acetylcytidine (ac4C) is the only acetylation modification that has been characterized in eukaryotic RNA, and is correlated with various human diseases. Laboratory identification of ac4C is complicated by factors such as sample hydrolysis and high cost. Unfortunately, existing computational methods to identify ac4C do not achieve satisfactory performance. Results We developed a novel tool, DeepAc4C, which identifies ac4C using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) using hybrid features composed of physicochemical patterns and a distributed representation of nucleic acids. Our results show that the proposed model achieved better and more balanced performance than existing predictors. Furthermore, we evaluated the effect that specific features had on the model predictions and their interaction effects. Several interesting sequence motifs specific to ac4C were identified. Availability and implementation The webserver is freely accessible at https://webmalab.cn/, the source code and datasets are accessible at Zenodo with URL https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5138047 and Github with URL https://github.com/wangchao-malab/DeepAc4C. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.