DBP-CNN: Deep learning-based prediction of DNA-binding proteins by coupling discrete cosine transform with two-dimensional convolutional neural network

•Developed a novel deep learning based predictor namely DBP-CNN for prediction of DBPs.•The local decisive information from PSSM was investigated by tetra-slicing.•DCT compression technique was applied to eliminate noisy data.•2D CNN, XGB, ERT, and RF were used as classification algorithms.•Our novel feature encoder PSSM-TS-DCT with 2D CNN achieved the best performance.