Dear CASP Participants:

As discussed at the last two CASP meetings, several bottleneck problems are being pursued outside of the regular CASP framework. The first of these 'Off-CASP' experiments was held last year, and was on refinement of models (http://predictioncenter.org/caspR/). We are now embarking on the second experiment: modeling of the effects of single point mutations or similar small changes in protein sequence. As with CASP-R, this will not be a blind rediction experiment but rather a small scale benchmarking, aimed at focusing attention on the issues involved, and stimulating discussion and collaboration. The targets are a set of 30 mutations in T4 lysozyme, suggested by Brian Matthews. The idea is to model these as if the answers were not known and later discuss the results and possible ways forward. Researchers using any method that can address these problems, including refinement techniques, are strongly encouraged to participate. Please take a look at this new site at:
http://predictioncenter.org/cgi-bin/caspm1/.

We will be receiving models until November 15, 2007.

Krzysztof Fidelis
Andriy Kryshtafovych
John Moult
for CASP organizers

Dear CASP participants,

This message is to alert you to a recent FORCASP post by Kevin Karplus.
He has several suggestions regarding how CASP should measure prediction
quality. Now is a good time to discuss any changes we would like to
implement in time for CASP8. Please voice your informed opinions at
FORCASP website!

CASP organizers

Dear CASP Participants,


Beginning last month we have been running an open experiment in
predicting structural effects of small changes in protein sequence. We
have received an encouraging initial response but some groups have
requested more time to complete their predictions. Thus we extend the
deadline to collect predictions to December 14, 2007. The CASP-M site
address is: http://www.predictioncenter.org/caspm1

Registration will remain open so new CASP-M groups can still
participate.


Krzysztof Fidelis

Andriy Kryshtafovych

John Moult