High-throughput discovery of functional disordered regions

Abstract

Partially or fully intrinsically disordered proteins are widespread in eukaryotic proteomes and play important biological functions. With the recognition that well defined protein structure is not a fundamental requirement for function come novel challenges, such as assigning function to disordered regions. In their recent work, Babu and colleagues (Ravarani et al, 2018) took on this challenge by developing IDR‐Screen, a robust high‐throughput approach for identifying functions of disordered regions.

Figure 1. Summary of IDR‐Screen

IDR‐Screen involves assembling a library of random or designed sequences and inserting it into the genome as a part of a protein used for selection (in this case, the selection is for heat‐shock survival). The library is screened to discover functional vs. non‐functional sequences. The dataset of experimentally validated functional and non‐functional sequences is then analyzed using machine learning, and features that can discriminate functional and non‐functional sequences are extracted.