Waterloo, Canada — Bioinformatics Solutions Inc. is proud to announce the release of RAPTOR 4.2, a protein threading software package, ranked as one of the very top servers in CASP8 (Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction 2008) for all targets, for the fourth consecutive competition.

RAPTOR accurately predicts protein structures by threading a query protein sequence through structure template libraries. The latest edition of RAPTOR, version 4.2, offers a new internal 3D structure modeling application to eliminate the need for expensive third-party Modelling software. Further RAPTOR applications include three different threading engines and a homology search module (PSI-BLAST based).

CASP is a community-wide competition to advance the field of protein structure prediction taking place every two years since 1994. Ranking for this competition is based on more than 80 protein structure prediction servers worldwide. Protein structures that are either expected to be solved shortly or that have been recently solved, yet to be released to the public are used as targets for the prediction. Each server’s performance is measured by the sum of its prediction quality scores for all targets. Several assessment groups perform independent rankings. According to the ranking list generated by TM-score, RAPTOR is placed 2nd among all the servers. The well-known ROBETTA server is ranked number 5 in the same list.

RAPTOR first appeared in CAFASP3 (CASP5) in 2002 and was ranked number one in the individual server group for that year. Since then, RAPTOR has actively participated in every CASP and received consistently top rankings. The RAPTOR software package is provided by Bioinformatics Solutions Inc.