Use of correspondence discriminant analysis to predict the subcellular location of bacterial proteins.

Correspondence discriminant analysis (CDA) is a multivariate statistical method derived from discriminant analysis which can be used on contingency tables. We have used CDA to separate Gram negative bacteria proteins according to their subcellular location. The high resolution of the discrimination obtained makes this method a good tool to predict subcellular location when this information is not known. The main advantage of this technique is its simplicity. Indeed, by computing two linear formulae on amino acid composition, it is possible to classify a protein into one of the three classes of subcellular location we have defined. The CDA itself can be computed with the ADE-4 software package that can be downloaded, as well as the data set used in this study, from the Pôle Bio-Informatique Lyonnais (PBIL) server at http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr.