ITScorePro

Overview
ITScorePR is a software for evaluation of the binding tightness of a given protein-RNA structure. It provides an energy scoring function, referred to as ITScorePR, for binding mode selection to study protein-RNA interactions. Protein-RNA interactions play important roles in many biological processes. Given the high cost and technical difficulties in experimental methods, computationally predicting the binding complexes from individual protein and RNA structures is pressingly needed, in which a reliable scoring function is one of the critical components. ITScorePR was derived from experimentally determined protein-RNA complex structures by using a novel statistical mechanics-based iterative method. This method circumvents the long-standing reference state problem in traditional knowledge-based scoring functions by using rapid iterations through a physical, global convergence function. ITScorePR has been validated with four diverse test sets. The ITScore-PR software can be used stand-alone or easily implemented in other docking programs for protein-RNA recognition.

Availability
ITScorePR is available free of charge for academic users. To obtain an academic user license, please download the ITScorePR academic license file, fill out, and fax back to us. ITScorePR will be sent to you upon approval.

For commercial or other non-academic users, please send emails to umc-dcrc-itscorepro-license@missouri.edu for details of access conditions.

References
Huang SY, Zou XQ. A knowledge-based scoring function for protein-RNA interactions derived from a statistical mechanics-based iterative method. Nucleic Acids Research,1-12, doi:10.1093/nar/gku077, 2014.