Network-based strategies for protein characterization

Abstract

Protein structure characterization is fundamental to understand protein properties, such as folding process and protein resistance to thermal stress, up to unveiling organism pathologies (e.g., prion disease). In this chapter, we provide an overview on how the spectral properties of the networks reconstructed from the Protein Contact Map (PCM) can be used to generate informative observables. As a specific case study, we apply two different network approaches to an example protein dataset, for the aim of discriminating protein folding state, and for the reconstruction of protein 3D structure.

Keywords: Graph embedding; Laplacian of a graph; Protein folding; Protein structure; Shortest path distance matrix.