PROSITE is a
protein database.
It consists of entries describing the
protein families
A protein family is a group of evolutionarily related proteins. In many cases, a protein family has a corresponding gene family, in which each gene encodes a corresponding protein with a 1:1 relationship. The term "protein family" should not be c ...
,
domains and
functional sites as well as
amino acid
Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although over 500 amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the 22 α-amino acids incorporated into proteins. Only these 22 a ...
patterns and profiles in them. These are manually curated by a team of the
Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is an academic not-for-profit foundation which federates bioinformatics activities throughout Switzerland.
The institute was established on 30 March 1998 and its mission is to provide core bioinform ...
and tightly integrated into
Swiss-Prot
UniProt is a freely accessible database of protein sequence and functional information, many entries being derived from genome sequencing projects. It contains a large amount of information about the biological function of proteins derived from ...
protein annotation. PROSITE was created in 1988 by
Amos Bairoch
Amos Bairoch (born 22 November 1957) is a Swiss bioinformatician and Professor of Bioinformatics at the Department of Human Protein Sciences of the University of Geneva where he leads the CALIPHO group at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, ...
, who directed the group for more than 20 years. Since July 2018, the director of PROSITE and Swiss-Prot is Alan Bridge.
PROSITE's uses include identifying possible functions of newly discovered proteins and analysis of known proteins for previously undetermined activity. Properties from well-studied
gene
In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...
s can be propagated to biologically related organisms, and for different or poorly known genes biochemical functions can be predicted from similarities. PROSITE offers tools for protein
sequence analysis
In bioinformatics, sequence analysis is the process of subjecting a DNA, RNA or peptide sequence to any of a wide range of analytical methods to understand its features, function, structure, or evolution. It can be performed on the entire genome ...
and motif detection (see
sequence motif
In biology, a sequence motif is a nucleotide or amino-acid sequence pattern that is widespread and usually assumed to be related to biological function of the macromolecule. For example, an ''N''-glycosylation site motif can be defined as ''A ...
,
PROSITE patterns). It is part of the
ExPASy proteomics
Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins. Proteins are vital macromolecules of all living organisms, with many functions such as the formation of structural fibers of muscle tissue, enzymatic digestion of food, or synthesis and replicatio ...
analysis servers.
The database ProRule builds on the domain descriptions of PROSITE.
It provides additional information about functionally or structurally critical amino acids. The rules contain information about biologically meaningful residues, like active sites,
substrate
Substrate may refer to:
Physical layers
*Substrate (biology), the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the surface or medium on which an organism grows or is attached
** Substrate (aquatic environment), the earthy material that exi ...
- or
co-factor-binding sites,
posttranslational modification sites or
disulfide
In chemistry, a disulfide (or disulphide in British English) is a compound containing a functional group or the anion. The linkage is also called an SS-bond or sometimes a disulfide bridge and usually derived from two thiol groups.
In inorg ...
bonds, to help function determination. These can automatically generate annotation based on PROSITE motifs.
Statistics
, release 2022_01 has 1,902 documentation entries, 1,311 patterns, 1,336 profiles, and 1,352 ProRules.
See also
*
Uniprot
UniProt is a freely accessible database of protein sequence and functional information, many entries being derived from genome sequencing projects. It contains a large amount of information about the biological function of proteins derived fro ...
the universal
protein database, a central resource on protein information - PROSITE adds data to it.
*
InterPro a centralized database, grouping data from databases of protein families, domains and functional sites - part of the data come from PROSITE.
*
Protein subcellular localization prediction another example of use of PROSITE.
References
External links
*{{Official website, http://prosite.expasy.org/
ProRule— database of rules based on PROSITE predictors
Protein databases
Proteomics