Prediction of protein secondary structures by a neural network.

We have studied the prediction of globular protein secondary structures by neural networks. Protein secondary structures are allocated to amino acid residues using Kabsch and Sander's dictionary of protein secondary structures and the neural network is taught the protein secondary structures. The input layer of the neural network allows sequences of residues including 20 amino acids, chain break, B, X and Z. We consider classifying secondary structures into groups of 3, 4 and 8. In each case, we calculate the percentage of correct predictions. We discuss the effect of overlearning on the protein secondary structure prediction. In addition, we include the application of a neural network with a modular architecture to prediction of protein secondary structures. We compare the results from neural networks with a modular architecture and with a simple three-layer structure.