UniProt

Overview

The UniProt logo

UniProt (Universal Protein Resource) is a comprehensive, high-quality, and freely accessible database of protein sequence and functional information. It is a central hub for the collection of functional information on proteins, with accurate, consistent, and rich annotation. UniProt is a collaboration between the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), and the Protein Information Resource (PIR).

History

UniProt was created in 2002 by the merger of three major protein sequence databases: Swiss-Prot, TrEMBL, and PIR-PSD. The goal was to provide a single, centralized resource for protein sequence and functional information.

Components

UniProt consists of several components:

• UniProtKB (UniProt Knowledgebase): The central database of protein sequences and functional information, which is divided into two sections:

 * Swiss-Prot: A manually annotated and reviewed section.
 * TrEMBL: A section that contains computationally analyzed records that await full manual annotation.

• UniParc (UniProt Archive): A comprehensive and non-redundant database that contains most of the publicly available protein sequences in the world.

• UniRef (UniProt Reference Clusters): Provides clustered sets of sequences from UniProtKB and selected UniParc records to obtain complete coverage of sequence space at several resolutions.

Features

UniProt provides a wide range of features, including:

• Detailed protein sequence information.
• Functional annotations such as protein function, enzyme activity, and biological process involvement.
• Information on protein structure, post-translational modifications, and protein-protein interactions.
• Cross-references to other databases, including genomic and proteomic resources.

Access and Tools

UniProt is accessible through its website, which provides a user-friendly interface for searching and retrieving data. It also offers various tools for sequence analysis, including:

• BLAST: For sequence similarity searching.
• Align: For multiple sequence alignment.
• Retrieve/ID mapping: For converting between different database identifiers.

Applications

UniProt is widely used in bioinformatics, molecular biology, and biomedical research. It supports a variety of applications, including:

• Drug discovery and development.
• Genomics and proteomics research.
• Functional genomics studies.

Related pages

• Protein structure
• Bioinformatics
• Genomics
• Proteomics