Foldcomp: a library and format for compressing and indexing large protein structure sets

Abstract

Highly accurate protein structure predictors have generated hundreds of millions of protein structures; these pose a challenge in terms of storage and processing. Here, we present Foldcomp, a novel lossy structure compression algorithm, and indexing system to address this challenge. By using a combination of internal and Cartesian coordinates and a bi-directional NeRF-based strategy, Foldcomp improves the compression ratio by a factor of three compared to the next best method. Its reconstruction error of 0.08 angstrom is comparable to the best lossy compressor. It is five times faster than the next fastest compressor and competes with the fastest decompressors. With its multi-threading implementation and a Python interface that allows for easy database downloads and efficient querying of protein structures by accession, Foldcomp is a powerful tool for managing and analysing large collections of protein structures.