Prediction of signal peptides and subcellular localization
In the search for accurate prediction of signal peptides, many approaches have been investigated. Almost 20 years ago, the first method for prediction of classical signal peptides was published [von Heijne, 1986]. Nowadays, more sophisticated machine learning methods, such as neural networks, support vector machines, and hidden Markov models have arrived along with the increasing computational power and they all perform superior to the old weight matrix based methods [Menne et al., 2000]. Also, many other "classical" statistical approaches have been carried out, often in conjunction with machine learning methods. In the following sections, a wide range of different signal peptide and subcellular prediction methods will be described.
Most signal peptide prediction methods require the presence of the correct N-terminal end of the preprotein for correct classification. As large scale genome sequencing projects sometimes assign the 5'-end of genes incorrectly, many proteins are annotated without the correct N-terminal [Reinhardt and Hubbard, 1998] leading to incorrect prediction of subcellular localization. These erroneous predictions can be ascribed directly to poor gene finding. Other methods for prediction of subcellular localization use information within the mature protein and therefore they are more robust to N-terminal truncation and gene finding errors.