Introduction

HSSP stands for Homology-derived Secondary Structure of Proteins. It was designed by

Chris Sander

and

Reinhard Schneider

They wanted to use HSSP to aid with the prediction of the secondary structure of proteins. Hence the name: Homology derived Secondary Structure of Proteins.

Burkhard Rost

In practice it was Burkhard Rost who, in his PHD software, used MSAs (multiple sequence alignments) as input to his neural networks for secondary structure prediction, and thereby gave HSSP an enormous popularity boost. You might want to read:
(Improved prediction of protein secondary structure by use of sequence profiles and neural networks B Rost, C Sander PNAS 1993, 90:7558-7562)

In 2000 the HSSP maintenance was taken over by:

Elmar Krieger

and in 2011 by

Maarten Hekkelman.

In 2012 Maarten has rewritten the HSSP software (so we are now at HSSP 2.0). We believe the resulting HSSP files now deliver (even) better alignments than they already did in the days of HSSP 1.0.

In 2014 the HSSP maintenance was taken over by:

Coos Baakman

And nowadays Coos makes sure the HSSP files remain up-to-date.