Proteomics Databases
Researchers require an ever-increasing amount of in-depth and up-to-date information. To satisfy this thirst for high quality data, GeneBio has since 1998 provided access to the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' comprehensive annotated proteomics databases: Swiss-Prot, PROSITE and SWISS-2DPAGE. These state-of-the-art databases provide the information needed towards research optimization.
Swiss-Prot
Swiss-Prot, the manually curated section of the UniProt Knowledgebase, was created by Amos Bairoch in 1986 and quickly became such a reference that every life scientists dealing with proteomics needed to access it. Today, Swiss-Prot is known throughout the world as the gold standard for protein research.
The Swiss-Prot knowledgebase does more than just collect information on protein sequences. It is an extensively cross-linked database that connects the various findings in the diverse field of proteomics research. In additions to the core sequence data, references and taxonomy, every Swiss-Prot entry includes manually annotated information (such as function, structure, variants, PTMs, tissue specificity, features, etc.). Swiss-Prot also merges sequence data to minimize redundancy and is cross-referenced with a variety of different databases and bioinformatics tools.
The Geneva Swiss-Prot group develops and improves the UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot protein knowledgebase, the most widely used protein information resource. This activity is carried out in close collaboration with the Hinxton EMBL outstation, the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). Its goal is to provide the worldwide Life Science community with the highest quality level of protein-related information. Since 2003, in the framework of the Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) project, such a collaborative endeavor also encompasses the PIR (Protein Information Resource) group from the Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC.
PROSITE
PROSITE is a database of protein families and domains. It is based on the observation that, while there is a huge number of different proteins, most of them can be grouped, on the basis of similarities in their sequences, into a limited number of families. Proteins or protein domains belonging to a particular family generally share functional attributes and are derived from a common ancestor. PROSITE is comprised of the specific signatures for over a thousand protein families or domains. Information on the structure and function of these proteins as well as the consensus pattern for the signature and a list of references are provided.
SWISS-2DPAGE
SWISS-2DPAGE is an annotated two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D PAGE) and SDS-PAGE database established in 1993 and maintained collaboratively by the Biomedical Proteomics Research Group (BPRG) of the Geneva University Hospital and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB). Besides the 2D PAGE images showing the determined location of the protein, as well as a theoretical region computed from the sequence protein, the database provides textual data on each protein (including mapping procedures, physiological and pathological information, experimental data and bibliographical references) as well as cross-references to Medline, other federated 2-D databases and to Swiss-Prot.
GeneBio recommends access to these databases through the ExPASy server or an ExPASy mirror site as these sites are maintained by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. The ExPASy sites provide the latest 'updates' and 'releases' of the PROSITE and SWISS-2DPAGE databases. ExPASy also offers cutting edge proteomic tools and software packages.
PROSITE and SWISS-2DPAGE are developed and copyrighted by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB). Access to these databases by commercial entities is subject to the licensing conditions outlined in the User Notice (PDF) and the SIB License (PDF). Please contact us for further details. Please read the SIB Database Legal Disclaimer.
