GENEVA/LAUSANNE, Switzerland / January 13, 2011 -


The first public version of neXtProt, an innovative knowledge platform dedicated to human proteins, is now available. This new resource contains a wealth of high-quality data on all the human proteins that are produced by the 20,000 protein-coding genes found in the human genome. The content of neXtProt will be continuously extended so as to provide many more carefully selected data sets and analysis tools.

Developed jointly by SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' group CALIPHO (Computer and Laboratory Investigation of Proteins of Human Origin) and by GeneBio, neXtProt is designed to meet the needs of both academic and industry researchers and to become an essential resource for biomedical researchers interested in the role of proteins in health and diseases.

neXtProt capitalizes on the rigorous annotation work carried out by the Swiss-Prot group and contains all the annotations concerning the human proteins curated by Swiss-Prot. The current version also includes antibody expression data from the Human Protein Atlas developed by the group of Mathias Uhlen at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm and mRNA expression data analyzed and obtained from Bgee, a database for gene expression evolution developed by the Evolutionary Bioinformatics Group at the University of Lausanne and SIB. Synergies with other resources developed by SIB are also planned in a near future.

The SIB and GeneBio want neXtProt to be a web-based participative platform much beyond a well-organized comprehensive data repository. Therefore, in addition to enhanced search capabilities, the current version of neXtProt allows users to navigate through its rich content from different perspectives (proteins, genes and references), with a first generation of visualization tools and user-customization tools for bookmarking and labeling selected entries.

This beta release will provide the public with a first glimpse of the scope of data and functionalities that will be offered by neXtProt. SIB and GeneBio aim to develop neXtProt to help life science researchers to make sense of human proteins' functions and roles.

Visit neXtProt here: beta.nextprot.org