DeepMVP: deep learning models trained on high-quality data accurately predict PTM sites and variant-induced alterations
Post-translational modifications (PTMs) are critical regulators of protein function, and their disruption is a key mechanism by which missense variants contribute to disease. Accurate PTM site prediction using deep learning can help identify PTM-altering variants, but progress has been limited by the lack of large, high-quality training datasets. Here, we introduce PTMAtlas, a curated compendium of 397,524 PTM sites generated through systematic reprocessing of 241 public mass-spectrometry datasets, and DeepMVP, a deep learning framework trained on PTMAtlas to predict PTM sites for phosphorylation, acetylation, methylation, sumoylation, ubiquitination and N-glycosylation. DeepMVP substantially outperforms existing tools across all six PTM types. Its application to predicting PTM-altering missense variants shows strong concordance with experimental results, validated using literature-curated variants and cancer proteogenomic datasets. Together, PTMAtlas and DeepMVP provide a robust platform for PTM research and a scalable framework for assessing the functional consequences of coding variants through the lens of PTMs.
Authors
- Bo Wen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2261-3150)
- Matthew V. Holt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1418-6139)
- Sara R. Savage (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8170-3132)
- Ping Han (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9633-6286)
- Jonathan T. Lei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0209-8051)
- Zhiao Shi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1220-1219)
- Yongchao Dou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9315-1155)
- Bing Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8676-2425)
- Kai Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0810-2437)
- Yi Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9976-518X)
- Chenwei Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0920-8639)
Institutions
- Baylor College of Medicine (US)
- University of Washington (US)
- University of Michigan (US)
- Baylor Genetics (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Methods
- Published
- 2025-08-26
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-025-02797-x
- Citations
- 7
- Primary Topic
- RNA modifications and cancer
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.64
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Robert and Janice McNair Foundation
- Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas
- Nvidia
- National Cancer Institute