Representation-aware calibration enables statistically reliable protein structure search

Searching large databases of predicted protein structures can reveal remote homologs, but reliable discovery requires accurate significance estimates. We show that native E-values reported by protein structure search tools such as Foldseek and Reseek can be unreliable, leading to false discoveries or missed homologs. To address this problem, we introduce Struct-Caliper, which provides reliable query-specific p-values for protein structure search. The method uses representation-aware query randomization to generate background queries and compares observed alignment scores with the highest scores from randomized searches of the same database. In simulations, SG p-values generally kept reported false positive at or below the chosen cutoff under the evaluated randomization procedures. In searches of 15,177 ASTRAL40 structures, SG p-values increased Foldseek homolog recovery by 18.2% with slightly fewer false discoveries compared with native E-values at a cutoff of 0.01. For Reseek, false discoveries even decreased by 99.5%. Across 73 queries searched against more than two million AlphaFoldDB structures, SG p-values increased the mean recovery of DALI-supported matches by 23.5% at the same cutoff. These results show that Struct-Caliper can improve the reliability of structure searches and help prioritize discoveries for further biological analysis.

Shi, L., Zhou, H., Yang, Y., Lu, Y.

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