Simple Modular Architecture Research Tool (SMART) is a
biological database
Biological databases are libraries of biological sciences, collected from scientific experiments, published literature, high-throughput experiment technology, and computational analysis. They contain information from research areas including geno ...
that is used in the identification and analysis of
protein domain
In molecular biology, a protein domain is a region of a protein's Peptide, polypeptide chain that is self-stabilizing and that Protein folding, folds independently from the rest. Each domain forms a compact folded Protein tertiary structure, thre ...
s within protein sequences.
SMART uses
profile-hidden Markov models built from
multiple sequence alignment
Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) is the process or the result of sequence alignment of three or more biological sequences, generally protein, DNA, or RNA. These alignments are used to infer evolutionary relationships via phylogenetic analysis an ...
s to detect protein domains in protein sequences. The most recent release of SMART contains 1,204 domain models.
Data from SMART was used in creating the
Conserved Domain Database collection and is also distributed as part of the
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 ...
database.
The database is hosted by the
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to molecular biology research and is supported by 29 member states, two prospect member states, and one associate member state. EMBL was created in ...
in Heidelberg.
References
External links
SMART web site
Protein structure
Protein classification
Protein databases
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