Dennis A. Sun

We investigated protein structure predictions as an alternative to protein sequence homology for comparing single-cell RNA-seq data across species.

The ProteinCartography pipeline identifies proteins related to a query protein using sequence- and structure-based searches, compares all protein structures, and creates a navigable map that can be used to look at protein relationships and make hypotheses about function.

We've applied ProteinCartography, a tool for protein family exploration, to the well-studied actin family. We’re able to categorize actins and related proteins into distinguishable functional buckets, and we uncovered some surprising hypotheses that could prompt further study.