Solvent Accessible Surface Area Hot-Spot Detection Method

The natural tendency of proteins to bind to each other, as well as to many different molecules, forming stable and specific complexes is fundamental to all biological processes. The structural and functional description of protein-protein and protein-ligand complexes and their comprehension is a key concept, not only to increase the scientific knowledge in basic terms but also for the application to the biomedical and pharmaceutical industry. In this work we have look for more accurate ways of predicting the crucial residues for complex binding (Hot-spots) that can be used to model protein structure, dynamics and function. We developed an algorithm based in innovative series of descriptors, which have not been used in hot-spot determination and that can be applied to both protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interfaces HS detection. A web-server for public use of the new methodological approaches was built and can be accessed at  http://bio-aims.udc.es/MolStructPred.php