PredMHC: An Effective Predictor of Major Histocompatibility Complex Using Mixed Features

Abstract

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a large locus on vertebrate DNA that contains a tightly linked set of polymorphic genes encoding cell surface proteins essential for the adaptive immune system. The groups of proteins encoded in the MHC play an important role in the adaptive immune system. Therefore, the accurate identification of the MHC is necessary to understand its role in the adaptive immune system. An effective predictor called PredMHC is established in this study to identify the MHC from protein sequences. Firstly, PredMHC encoded a protein sequence with mixed features including 188D, APAAC, KSCTriad, CKSAAGP, and PAAC. Secondly, three classifiers including SGD, SMO, and random forest were trained on the mixed features of the protein sequence. Finally, the prediction result was obtained by the voting of the three classifiers. The experimental results of the 10-fold cross-validation test in the training dataset showed that PredMHC can obtain 91.69% accuracy. Experimental results on comparison with other features, classifiers, and existing methods showed the effectiveness of PredMHC in predicting the MHC.