Predict drug-protein interaction in cellular networking.

Involved with many diseases such as cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative, inflammatory and respiratory disorders, GPCRs (G-protein-coupled receptors) are the most frequent targets for drug development: over 50% of all prescription drugs currently on the market are actually acting by targeting GPCRs directly or indirectly. Found in every living thing and nearly all cells, ion channels play crucial roles for many vital functions in life, such as heartbeat, sensory transduction, and central nervous system response. Their dysfunction may have significant impact to human health, and hence ion channels are deemed as "the next GPCRs". To develop GPCR-targeting or ion-channel-targeting drugs, the first important step is to identify the interactions between potential drug compounds with the two kinds of protein receptors in the cellular networking. In this minireview, we are to introduce two predictors. One is called iGPCR-Drug accessible at http://www.jci-bioinfo.cn/iGPCR-Drug/; the other called iCDI-PseFpt at http://www.jci-bioinfo.cn/iCDI-PseFpt. The former is for identifying the interactions of drug compounds with GPCRs; while the latter for that with ion channels. In both predictors, the drug compound was formulated by the two-dimensional molecular fingerprint, and the protein receptor by the pseudo amino acid composition generated with the grey model theory, while the operation engine was the fuzzy K-nearest neighbor algorithm. For the convenience of most experimental pharmaceutical and medical scientists, a step-bystep guide is provided on how to use each of the two web-servers to get the desired results without the need to follow the complicated mathematics involved originally for their establishment.