catRAPID predictions of protein-RNA interactions

In the catRAPID algorithm, the interaction propensity between a protein-RNA pair is computed using secondary structure properties, van der Waals forces and hydrogen bonding potentials (55). The algorithm is able to discriminate between interacting and non-interacting pairs with an area under the curve (AUC) on a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.78, and with false discovery rate (FDR) significantly below 0.25 when the Z-score values are >2 (56). In this work, the N-terminus of aS (residues 1–25) is predicted to attract RNA, while the C-terminal region (residues 104–140) shows much poorer propensity. For the calculations presented in this work (57), the whole human transcriptome was used and the overall interaction propensity (>0.4, corresponding to low binding affinity) for different aS regions was computed. TDP43, TRA2A and SRSF3 are used as positive controls. Full length aS103 and aS140 are not predicted to interact with RNA as monomers (Figure ​(Figure3E3E).