Research Progresses on Scoring Function Design and RNA-binding Site Identification in Protein-RNA Docking

Molecular docking is one of the effective methods for studying the interaction and recognition between protein and RNA. The reasonable design of scoring functions and accurate RNA-binding site identification are critical to the successful prediction of protein-RNA complex structures. In this paper, the research progresses on the two important aspects involved in protein-RNA docking study including scoring function design and RNA-binding site prediction were reviewed. And a comparison for these currently proposed methods was made. Finally, the major difficulties were analyzed in the two aspects and the development direction in the future was discussed.