Mon, May 10, 2004: BSI Announces New Product, RAPTOR for Protein Structure Prediction
Bioinformatics Solutions Inc., is pleased to announce the official arrival of their new product RAPTOR 2.0.
RAPTOR, voted by peers as the most interesting new method for protein structure prediction at the CASP 5 competition, is leading the way in accurate, automated, high- throughput protein structure prediction. inding a protein structure and function is difficult, but key to the success of worldwide proteomics efforts" said President, Ming Li, We are very excited about our new product RAPTOR. It will definitely benefit our users engaged in high-throughput drug discovery; identification of potentially novel protein candidates; and researchers who need to get a protein structure and functional annotation information rapidly.? At present, determining the structure of one protein deploying X-ray crystallography or NMR technologies is a long process (~6 months). An effectively sensitive computer prediction tool, like RAPTOR, can realistically save researchers time and money, as time to market for a potential drug is reduced," states Li. The "RAPTOR Flowchart" illustrates how this new software tool works to predict protein structures. RAPTOR new method uses linear programming to perform threading-based structure prediction. The program offers the flexibility of turning on and off pairwise constraints, which achieves the highest sensitivity at all levels: family, superfamily and fold. View RAPTOR No. 1 ranking at CAFASP3/CASP5 in the non-meta server category "CASP 5 Results". Other unique features in the software include its ability to add Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) constraint data. That is, a researcher can add NOE (Nuclear Overhauser Enhancement) into the program before threading starts, resulting in even higher accuracy of the predicted structure. The program also boasts an intuitive PyMOL-based graphical interface (PROView) which allows users to simultaneously visualize and manipulate predicted structure and sequence alignment data, an up-to-date PDB library, intranet web server capability, distributed functionality and much more. See "RAPTOR Product Overview" for more information. The RAPTOR suite is also available in a complete pipeline for pharmaceutical and biotech companies engaged in high-throughput drug discovery. RAPTOR Pipeline has the ability to get both protein structure predictions and functional annotation information from both the PDB and Genbank databases. Workflow productivity is increased through the incorporation of our rapid, well-respected PatternHunter software to perform homology searches of translated DNA sequences. See "RAPTOR Pipeline" for more details. Whether you are working in a high-throughput environment or need a local and remote execution via a consistent interface, RAPTOR 2.0 promises to be the tool to get you the best protein structure and functional annotation results. Bioinformatics Solutions (BSI) provides solutions to core bioinformatics problems in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, through innovative ideas, advanced algorithms and top-notch software development and customization. In addition to RAPTOR software, BSI offers other products like, PEAKS, for de novo and protein identification of ms/ms data and PatternHunter for rapid DNA and protein homology search. BSI is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario. Additional information is available by calling Bioinformatics Solutions at (519) 885-8288, ext. 10.
