Feature‐extraction from endopeptidase cleavage sites in mitochondrial targeting peptides

Cleavage sites in nuclear-encoded mitochondrial protein targeting peptides (mTPs) from mammals, yeast, and plants have been analysed for characteristic physicochemical features using statistical methods, perceptrons, multilayer neural networks, and self-organizing feature maps. Three different sequence motifs were found, revealing loosely defined arginine motifs with Arg in positions −10, −3, and −2. A self-organizing feature map was able to cluster these three types of endopeptidase target sites but did not identify any species-specific characteristics in mTPs. Neural networks were used to define local sequence features around precursor cleavage sites. Proteins 30:49–60, 1998. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.