Interaction force change prediction apparatus and interaction force change prediction method

An interaction force change prediction apparatus which predicts an interaction force change to be caused between two interacting proteins as a result of a mutation applied to at least one of the two interacting proteins, said interaction force change prediction apparatus comprising:

• a pre-mutation combination data creation unit configured to create pre-mutation combination data including a plurality of three-residue combinations which are obtained by reference to complex conformation information indicating each position of atoms included in the two interacting proteins, the three-residue combinations each including (i) a pair of amino acid residues which are included in the two interacting proteins, respectively, and which are closely positioned at a predetermined distance from each other at a binding site of the two interacting proteins and (ii) one amino acid residue which is adjacent, in an amino acid sequence, to one of the amino acid residues in the pair, in an N-terminal or C-terminal direction;
• a post-mutation combination data creation unit configured to create post-mutation combination data by reference to mutation information indicating a position of a pre-mutation amino acid residue of the protein to which the mutation is to be applied and a type of a resultant post-mutation amino acid residue, the post-mutation combination data including a post-mutation three-residue combination in which a type of the pre-mutation amino acid residue has been substituted with the type of the post-mutation amino acid residue for each of the three-residue combinations included in the pre-mutation combination data;
• an interaction score calculation unit configured to calculate a pre-mutation interaction score and a post-mutation interaction score by reference to a three-residue combination table which shows a three-character string representing types of three arbitrary amino acid residues in association with a combination score indicating an interaction force produced when the three arbitrary amino acid residues represented by the three-character string form the three-residue combination at the binding site of the two interacting proteins, the pre-mutation interaction score indicating a mean value of the combination scores of the three-residue combinations included in the pre-mutation combination data and the post-mutation interaction score indicating a mean value of the combination scores of the post-mutation three-residue combinations included in the post-mutation combination data;
• and
• a predicted-value calculation unit configured to calculate a difference between the pre-mutation interaction score and the post-mutation interaction score, as a predicted value for predicting the interaction force change to be caused between the two interacting proteins as a result of the mutation indicated by the mutation information.