In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints":
it provides both a detailed annotation resource for
protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserved
motifs taken from a
multiple sequence alignment
Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) may refer to the process or the result of sequence alignment of three or more biological sequences, generally protein, DNA, or RNA. In many cases, the input set of query sequences are assumed to have an evolutio ...
- together, the motifs form a characteristic signature for the aligned protein family. The motifs themselves are not necessarily contiguous in sequence, but may come together in 3D space to define molecular binding sites or interaction surfaces. The particular diagnostic strength of fingerprints lies in their ability to distinguish sequence differences at the clan, superfamily, family and subfamily levels. This allows fine-grained functional diagnoses of uncharacterised sequences, allowing, for example, discrimination between family members on the basis of the ligands they bind or the proteins with which they interact, and highlighting potential oligomerisation or allosteric sites.
PRINTS is a founding partner of the integrated resource,
InterPro
InterPro is a database of protein families, protein domains and functional sites in which identifiable features found in known proteins can be applied to new protein sequences in order to functionally characterise them.
The contents of InterPro c ...
, a widely used database of protein families, domains and functional sites.
References
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External links
PRINTS Database(University of Manchester Bioinformatics Education and Research)
Biological databases
Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester