Soft computing methods for the prediction of protein tertiary structures: A survey

•A compilation of soft computing approaches for solving the protein structure prediction problem.•90 methods of the last 15 years have been categorized according to the type of methodology employed.•A summary of the basic concepts in the research field of protein structure prediction.

The problem of protein structure prediction (PSP) represents one of the most important challenges in computational biology. Determining the three dimensional structure of proteins is necessary to understand their functions at molecular level. The most representative soft computing approaches for solving the protein tertiary structure prediction problem are summarized in this paper. These approaches have been categorized following the type of methodology. A total of 90 relevant works published in last 15 years in the field of protein structure prediction have been reported, including the best competitors in last CASP editions. However, despite large research effort in last decades, a considerable scope for further improvement still remains in this area.

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