Protein Structure Alignment Using Maximum Cliques and Local Search

The protein structure alignment problem addresses the question of measuring the degree of similarity, in three-dimensional structure, of two proteins. The representation of each protein using a simple contact map allows the correspondence graph for the protein pair to be generated and the maximum clique within this graph provides a measure of the structural similarity between the two proteins. This study uses a recently developed maximum clique algorithm, Phased Local Search (PLS), to locate the maximum cliques within correspondence graphs.