Methods and systems for identifying ligand-protein binding sites

The invention provides a novel integrated structure and system-based approach for drug target prediction that enables the large-scale discovery of new targets for existing drugs Novel computer-readable storage media and computer systems are also provided. Methods and systems of the invention use novel sequence order-independent structure alignment, hierarchical clustering, and probabilistic sequence similarity techniques to construct a probabilistic pocket ensemble (PPE) that captures even promiscuous structural features of different binding sites for a drug on known targets. The drug's PPE is combined with an approximation of the drug delivery profile to facilitate large-scale prediction of novel drug- protein interactions with several applications to biological research and drug development.