What is QMEAN?
1 Answer
Qualitative Model Energy ANalysis (QMEAN) is a composite scoring function, describing the major geometrical aspects of protein structures.
Explanation:
In protein structure prediction , a considerable number of alternative models are usually produced from which subsequently the final model has to be selected. Thus a scoring function for the identification of the best model within an ensemble of alternative models is a key component of most protein structure prediction pipelines.
In QMEAN several different structural descriptors are used.
The local geometry is analysed by a new kind of torsion angle potential over three consecutive amino acids.
A secondary structure specific distance - dependent pairwise residue level potential is used to assess long range interactions.
A solvation potential describes the burial status of the residues.
Two simple terms describing the the agreement of predicted implementations are investigated and several approaches to combine and optimise them are discussed.
The QMEAN score is thus used to select a subset of reliable models against which the structural consensus score is calculated.
