NommPred: Prediction of Mitochondrial and Mitochondrion-Related Organelle Proteins of Nonmodel Organisms

To estimate the functions of mitochondria of diverse eukaryotic nonmodel organisms in which the mitochondrial proteomes are not available, it is necessary to predict the protein sequence features of the mitochondrial proteins computationally. Various prediction methods that are trained using the proteins of model organisms belonging particularly to animals, plants, and fungi exist. However, such methods may not be suitable for predicting the proteins derived from nonmodel organisms because the sequence features of the mitochondrial proteins of diversified nonmodel organisms can differ from those of model organisms that are present only in restricted parts of the tree of eukaryotes. Here, we proposed NommPred, which predicts the mitochondrial proteins of nonmodel organisms that are widely distributed over eukaryotes. We used a gradient boosting machine to develop 2 predictors—one for predicting the proteins of mitochondria and the other for predicting the proteins of mitochondrion-related organelles that are highly reduced mitochondria. The performance of both predictors was found to be better than that of the best method available.