An Accurate Prediction of Protein Melting Temperature Directly from Amino Acid Sequence

The mechanism of protein thermal stability is still an important issue. It would be extremely valuable for physical and biological researches and academic and industrial applications. Despite numbers of studies accomplished, the prediction of protein thermal stability is still a challenge. Particularly, compared with the prediction of thermodynamic stability, there are much fewer available tools for the melting temperature (T-m) prediction, which is the best descriptor of protein thermal stability. Here we developed a method to predict protein T-m from amino acid sequences considering different scales of sequence separation, long-range and short-range. The averaged deviation value between the predicted and experimental T-m was about 5 degrees C. The associated linear correlation coefficients are equal to 0.97. The T-m prediction program is available at http://spg.med.tsinghua.edu.cn/TM.html.