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. 2015 Jul 1;31(13):2174-81.
doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btv123. Epub 2015 Feb 25.

Automated benchmarking of peptide-MHC class I binding predictions

Affiliations

Automated benchmarking of peptide-MHC class I binding predictions

Thomas Trolle et al. Bioinformatics. .

Abstract

Motivation: Numerous in silico methods predicting peptide binding to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules have been developed over the last decades. However, the multitude of available prediction tools makes it non-trivial for the end-user to select which tool to use for a given task. To provide a solid basis on which to compare different prediction tools, we here describe a framework for the automated benchmarking of peptide-MHC class I binding prediction tools. The framework runs weekly benchmarks on data that are newly entered into the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB), giving the public access to frequent, up-to-date performance evaluations of all participating tools. To overcome potential selection bias in the data included in the IEDB, a strategy was implemented that suggests a set of peptides for which different prediction methods give divergent predictions as to their binding capability. Upon experimental binding validation, these peptides entered the benchmark study.

Results: The benchmark has run for 15 weeks and includes evaluation of 44 datasets covering 17 MHC alleles and more than 4000 peptide-MHC binding measurements. Inspection of the results allows the end-user to make educated selections between participating tools. Of the four participating servers, NetMHCpan performed the best, followed by ANN, SMM and finally ARB.

Availability and implementation: Up-to-date performance evaluations of each server can be found online at http://tools.iedb.org/auto_bench/mhci/weekly. All prediction tool developers are invited to participate in the benchmark. Sign-up instructions are available at http://tools.iedb.org/auto_bench/mhci/join.

Contact: mniel@cbs.dtu.dk or bpeters@liai.org

Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Ranking scores for the initial IEDB benchmark. The scores for each server are calculated based on AUC performance, SRCC performance and both performance measures
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
The accumulated number of peptide-MHC measurements benchmarked by the automated benchmarking framework during its first 2 months. A total of 311 new measurements were identified and run during this time period
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
The number of unique alleles benchmarked by the automated benchmarking framework
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
The accumulated ranking score for each participating server, calculated after each weekly benchmark run during the first 2 months
Fig. 5.
Fig. 5.
Ranking scores calculated based on performance values from the dedicated dataset benchmark
Fig. 6.
Fig. 6.
A screenshot of the results page for the automated MHC-I benchmark. The individual dates may be clicked on to view detailed information on the evaluation datasets benchmarked that week

References

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