Combinatorics of Contacts in Protein Contact Maps.

Contacts play a fundamental role in the study of protein structure and folding problems. The contact map of a protein can be represented by arranging its amino acids on a horizontal line and drawing an arc between two residues if they form a contact. In this paper, we are mainly concerned with the combinatorial enumeration of the arcs in m-regular linear stack, an elementary structure of the protein contact map, which was introduced by Chen et al. (J Comput Biol 21(12):915-935, 2014). We modify the generating function for m-regular linear stacks by introducing a new variable y regarding to the number of arcs and obtain an equation satisfied by the generating function for m-regular linear stacks with n vertices and k arcs. Consequently, we also derive an equation satisfied by the generating function of the overall number of arcs in m-regular linear stacks with n vertices.

Enumeration of Extended m-Regular Linear Stacks.

The contact map of a protein fold in the two-dimensional (2D) square lattice has arc length at least 3, and each internal vertex has degree at most 2, whereas the two terminal vertices have degree at most 3. Recently, Chen, Guo, Sun, and Wang studied the enumeration of [Formula: see text]-regular linear stacks, where each arc has length at least [Formula: see text] and the degree of each vertex is bounded by 2. Since the two terminal points in a protein fold in the 2D square lattice may form contacts with at most three adjacent lattice points, we are led to the study of extended [Formula: see text]-regular linear stacks, in which the degree of each terminal point is bounded by 3. This model is closed to real protein contact maps. Denote the generating functions of the [Formula: see text]-regular linear stacks and the extended [Formula: see text]-regular linear stacks by [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], respectively. We show that [Formula: see text] can be written as a rational function of [Formula: see text]. For a certain [Formula: see text], by eliminating [Formula: see text], we obtain an equation satisfied by [Formula: see text] and derive the asymptotic formula of the numbers of [Formula: see text]-regular linear stacks of length [Formula: see text].

Zigzag stacks and m-regular linear stacks.

The contact map of a protein fold is a graph that represents the patterns of contacts in the fold. It is known that the contact map can be decomposed into stacks and queues. RNA secondary structures are special stacks in which the degree of each vertex is at most one and each arc has length of at least two. Waterman and Smith derived a formula for the number of RNA secondary structures of length n with exactly k arcs. Höner zu Siederdissen et al. developed a folding algorithm for extended RNA secondary structures in which each vertex has maximum degree two. An equation for the generating function of extended RNA secondary structures was obtained by Müller and Nebel by using a context-free grammar approach, which leads to an asymptotic formula. In this article, we consider m-regular linear stacks, where each arc has length at least m and the degree of each vertex is bounded by two. Extended RNA secondary structures are exactly 2-regular linear stacks. For any m ≥ 2, we obtain an equation for the generating function of the m-regular linear stacks. For given m, we deduce a recurrence relation and an asymptotic formula for the number of m-regular linear stacks on n vertices. To establish the equation, we use the reduction operation of Chen, Deng, and Du to transform an m-regular linear stack to an m-reduced zigzag (or alternating) stack. Then we find an equation for m-reduced zigzag stacks leading to an equation for m-regular linear stacks.