PeroxiBase: a database with new tools for peroxidase family classification

Peroxidases (EC 1.11.1.x), which are encoded by small or large multigenic families, are involved in several important physiological and developmental processes. They use various peroxides as electron acceptors to catalyse a number of oxidative reactions and are present in almost all living organisms. We have created a peroxidase database (http://peroxibase.isb-sib.ch) that contains all identified peroxidase-encoding sequences (about 6000 sequences in 940 organisms). They are distributed between 11 superfamilies and about 60 subfamilies. All the sequences have been individually annotated and checked. PeroxiBase can be consulted using six major interlink sections ‘Classes', ‘Organisms', ‘Cellular localisations', ‘Inducers', ‘Repressors' and ‘Tissue types'. General documentation on peroxidases and PeroxiBase is accessible in the ‘Documents' section containing ‘Introduction', ‘Class description', ‘Publications' and ‘Links'. In addition to the database, we have developed a tool to classify peroxidases based on the PROSITE profile methodology. To improve their specificity and to prevent overlaps between closely related subfamilies the profiles were built using a new strategy based on the silencing of residues. This new profile construction method and its discriminatory capacity have been tested and validated using the different peroxidase families and subfamilies present in the database. The peroxidase classification tool called PeroxiScan is accessible at the following address: http://peroxibase.isb-sib.ch/peroxiscan.ph

New and continuing developments at PROSITE

PROSITE (http://prosite.expasy.org/) consists of documentation entries describing protein domains, families and functional sites, as well as associated patterns and profiles to identify them. It is complemented by ProRule a collection of rules, which increases the discriminatory power of these profiles and patterns by providing additional information about functionally and/or structurally critical amino acids. PROSITE signatures, together with ProRule, are used for the annotation of domains and features of UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot entries. Here, we describe recent developments that allow users to perform whole-proteome annotation as well as a number of filtering options that can be combined to perform powerful targeted searches for biological discovery. The latest version of PROSITE (release 20.85, of 30 August 2012) contains 1308 patterns, 1039 profiles and 1041 ProRule

ProRule: a new database containing functional and structural information on PROSITE profiles

Motivation: Increase the discriminatory power of PROSITE profiles to facilitate function determination and provide biologically relevant information about domains detected by profiles for the annotation of proteins. Summary: We have created a new database, ProRule, which contains additional information about PROSITE profiles. ProRule contains notably the position of structurally and/or functionally critical amino acids, as well as the condition they must fulfill to play their biological role. These supplementary data should help function determination and annotation of the UniProt Swiss-Prot knowledgebase. ProRule also contains information about the domain detected by the profile in the Swiss-Prot line format. Hence, ProRule can be used to make Swiss-Prot annotation more homogeneous and consistent. The format of ProRule can be extended to provide information about combination of domains. Availability: ProRule can be accessed through ScanProsite at http://www.expasy.org/tools/scanprosite. A file containing the rules will be made available under the PROSITE copyright conditions on our ftp site (ftp://www.expasy.org/databases/prosite/) by the next PROSITE release. Contact: [email protected]

PROSITE, a protein domain database for functional characterization and annotation

PROSITE consists of documentation entries describing protein domains, families and functional sites, as well as associated patterns and profiles to identify them. It is complemented by ProRule, a collection of rules based on profiles and patterns, which increases the discriminatory power of these profiles and patterns by providing additional information about functionally and/or structurally critical amino acids. PROSITE is largely used for the annotation of domain features of UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot entries. Among the 983 (DNA-binding) domains, repeats and zinc fingers present in Swiss-Prot (release 57.8 of 22 September 2009), 696 (∼70%) are annotated with PROSITE descriptors using information from ProRule. In order to allow better functional characterization of domains, PROSITE developments focus on subfamily specific profiles and a new profile building method giving more weight to functionally important residues. Here, we describe AMSA, an annotated multiple sequence alignment format used to build a new generation of generalized profiles, the migration of ScanProsite to Vital-IT, a cluster of 633 CPUs, and the adoption of the Distributed Annotation System (DAS) to facilitate PROSITE data integration and interchange with other sources. The latest version of PROSITE (release 20.54, of 22 September 2009) contains 1308 patterns, 863 profiles and 869 ProRules. PROSITE is accessible at: http://www.expasy.org/prosite/

The 20 years of PROSITE

PROSITE consists of documentation entries describing protein domains, families and functional sites, as well as associated patterns and profiles to identify them. It is complemented by ProRule, a collection of rules based on profiles and patterns, which increases the discriminatory power of profiles and patterns by providing additional information about functionally and/or structurally critical amino acids. In this article, we describe the implementation of a new method to assign a status to pattern matches, the new PROSITE web page and a new approach to improve the specificity and sensitivity of PROSITE methods. The latest version of PROSITE (release 20.19 of 11 September 2007) contains 1319 patterns, 745 profiles and 764 ProRules. Over the past 2 years, about 200 domains have been added, and now 53% of UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot entries (release 54.2 of 11 September 2007) have a PROSITE match. PROSITE is available on the web at: http://www.expasy.org/prosit

ScanProsite: detection of PROSITE signature matches and ProRule-associated functional and structural residues in proteins

ScanProsite—http://www.expasy.org/tools/scanprosite/—is a new and improved version of the web-based tool for detecting PROSITE signature matches in protein sequences. For a number of PROSITE profiles, the tool now makes use of ProRules—context-dependent annotation templates—to detect functional and structural intra-domain residues. The detection of those features enhances the power of function prediction based on profiles. Both user-defined sequences and sequences from the UniProt Knowledgebase can be matched against custom patterns, or against PROSITE signatures. To improve response times, matches of sequences from UniProtKB against PROSITE signatures are now retrieved from a pre-computed match database. Several output modes are available including simple text views and a rich mode providing an interactive match and feature viewer with a graphical representation of result

ScanProsite: detection of PROSITE signature matches and ProRule-associated functional and structural residues in proteins

ScanProsite——is a new and improved version of the web-based tool for detecting PROSITE signature matches in protein sequences. For a number of PROSITE profiles, the tool now makes use of ProRules—context-dependent annotation templates—to detect functional and structural intra-domain residues. The detection of those features enhances the power of function prediction based on profiles. Both user-defined sequences and sequences from the UniProt Knowledgebase can be matched against custom patterns, or against PROSITE signatures. To improve response times, matches of sequences from UniProtKB against PROSITE signatures are now retrieved from a pre-computed match database. Several output modes are available including simple text views and a rich mode providing an interactive match and feature viewer with a graphical representation of results

The PROSITE database

The PROSITE database consists of a large collection of biologically meaningful signatures that are described as patterns or profiles. Each signature is linked to a documentation that provides useful biological information on the protein family, domain or functional site identified by the signature. The PROSITE database is now complemented by a series of rules that can give more precise information about specific residues. During the last 2 years, the documentation and the ScanProsite web pages were redesigned to add more functionalities. The latest version of PROSITE (release 19.11 of September 27, 2005) contains 1329 patterns and 552 profile entries. Over the past 2 years more than 200 domains have been added, and now 52% of UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot entries (release 48.1 of September 27, 2005) have a cross-reference to a PROSITE entry. The database is accessible at

The 20 years of PROSITE

PROSITE consists of documentation entries describing protein domains, families and functional sites, as well as associated patterns and profiles to identify them. It is complemented by ProRule, a collection of rules based on profiles and patterns, which increases the discriminatory power of profiles and patterns by providing additional information about functionally and/or structurally critical amino acids. In this article, we describe the implementation of a new method to assign a status to pattern matches, the new PROSITE web page and a new approach to improve the specificity and sensitivity of PROSITE methods. The latest version of PROSITE (release 20.19 of 11 September 2007) contains 1319 patterns, 745 profiles and 764 ProRules. Over the past 2 years, about 200 domains have been added, and now 53% of UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot entries (release 54.2 of 11 September 2007) have a PROSITE match. PROSITE is available on the web at: http://www.expasy.org/prosite/

Recent improvements to the PROSITE database

The PROSITE database consists of a large collection of biologically meaningful signatures that are described as patterns or profiles. Each signature is linked to documentation that provides useful biological information on the protein family, domain or functional site identified by the signature. The PROSITE web page has been redesigned and several tools have been implemented to help the user discover new conserved regions in their own proteins and to visualize domain arrangements. We also introduced the facility to search PDB with a PROSITE entry or a user's pattern and visualize matched positions on 3D structures. The latest version of PROSITE (release 18.17 of November 30, 2003) contains 1676 entries. The database is accessible at http://www.expasy.org/prosit