EVA is a continuously running benchmark

Benchmark (computing)

In computing, a benchmark is the act of running a computer program, a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it...

 project for assessing the quality of protein structure prediction

Protein structure prediction

Protein structure prediction is the prediction of the three-dimensional structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence — that is, the prediction of its secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure from its primary structure. Structure prediction is fundamentally different from the inverse...

 and secondary structure prediction

Secondary structure prediction

Secondary structure prediction is a set of techniques in bioinformatics that aim to predict the secondary structures of proteins and nucleic acid sequences based only on knowledge of their primary structure...

 methods. Methods for predicting both secondary structure

Secondary structure

In biochemistry and structural biology, secondary structure is the general three-dimensional form of local segments of biopolymers such as proteins and nucleic acids...

 and tertiary structure

Tertiary structure

In biochemistry and molecular biology, the tertiary structure of a protein or any other macromolecule is its three-dimensional structure, as defined by the atomic coordinates.-Relationship to primary structure:...

 - including homology modeling

Homology modeling

Homology modeling, also known as comparative modeling of protein refers to constructing an atomic-resolution model of the "target" protein from its amino acid sequence and an experimental three-dimensional structure of a related homologous protein...

, protein threading, and contact order

Contact order

The contact order of a protein is a measure of the locality of the inter-amino acid contacts in the protein's native state tertiary structure. It is calculated as the average sequence distance between residues that form native contacts in the folded protein divided by the total length of the protein...

 prediction - are compared to results from each week's newly solved protein structure

Protein structure

Proteins are an important class of biological macromolecules present in all organisms. Proteins are polymers of amino acids. Classified by their physical size, proteins are nanoparticles . Each protein polymer – also known as a polypeptide – consists of a sequence formed from 20 possible L-α-amino...

s deposited in the Protein Data Bank

Protein Data Bank

The Protein Data Bank is a repository for the 3-D structural data of large biological molecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids....

. The project aims to determine the prediction accuracy that would be expected for non-expert users of common, publicly available prediction webservers; this is similar to the related LiveBench

LiveBench

LiveBench is a continuously running benchmark project for assessing the quality of protein structure prediction and secondary structure prediction methods. LiveBench focuses mainly on homology modeling and protein threading but also includes secondary structure prediction, comparing publicly...

 project and stands in contrast to the bi-yearly benchmark CASP

CASP

CASP, which stands for Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction, is a community-wide, worldwide experiment for protein structure prediction taking place every two years since 1994...

, which aims to identify the maximum accuracy achievable by prediction experts.