Integrating bioinformatics tools to investigate protein phosphorylation

Protein phosphorylation is one of the most important protein post-translational modifications and plays a role in numerous cellular processes including recognition, signaling and degradation. It can be studied experimentally by various methodologies, like employing western blot analysis, site-directed mutagenesis, 2 D gel electrophoresis, mass spectrometry etc. A number of in silico tools have also been developed in order to predict plausible phosphorylation sites in a given protein. In this review, we conducted a benchmark study including the leading protein phosphorylation prediction software, in an effort to determine which performs best. The first place was taken by GPS 2.2, having predicted all phosphorylation sites with a 83% fidelity while in second place came NetPhos 2.0 with 69%.