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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Struct Biol. 2012 May 24;22(3):316–325. doi: 10.1016/j.sbi.2012.05.001

Table 1.

Common methods to characterize proteins and the main evolutionary pattern they rely on (See text for citations)

Method Website Comments
Gene Ontology http://www.geneontology.org Standard representation of gene and gene product attributes
Enzyme Nomenclature http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iubmb/enzyme Enzyme classification
BLAST/PSI-BLAST http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi Sequence comparison
Gotcha http://www.compbio.dundee.ac.uk/Software/GOtcha/gotcha.html Assigns GO terms based on sequence comparison
ESG http://kiharalab.org/web/esg.php Assigns GO terms based on sequence comparison
GOPred http://kinaz.fen.bilkent.edu.tr/gopred Assigns GO terms based on sequence comparison
Pfam http://pfam.sanger.ac.uk Database of protein families and their MSA
HMMER http://hmmer.janelia.org Sequence comparison based on hidden markov models
Prosite http://prosite.expasy.org Database of protein domains, families and functional sites
Interpro http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro Database of protein functional signatures
ELM http://elm.eu.org/links.html Resource to investigate functional sites in eukaryotic proteins
ConFunc http://www.sbg.bio.ic.ac.uk/~confunc Assigns GO terms based on sequence comparison
DME http://adios.tau.ac.il/DME11.html Assigns full EC number based on sequence comparison
Eficaz2 http://cssb.biology.gatech.edu/skolnick/webservice/EFICAz2/index.html Assigns full EC number based on sequence comparison
Dali http://ekhidna.biocenter.helsinki.fi/dali_server 3D protein structure comparison
TM-align http://zhanglab.ccmb.med.umich.edu/TM-align 3D protein structure comparison
TOPS++FATCAT http://fatcat.burnham.org/TOPS 3D protein structure comparison
CATH http://www.cathdb.info Protein domain structure classification
SCOP http://scop.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/scop Protein domain structure classification
ConCavity http://compbio.cs.princeton.edu/concavity Predicts ligand binding sites from protein structure
FTSite http://ftsite.bu.edu Predicts ligand binding sites from protein structure
LIGSITEcsc http://projects.biotec.tu-dresden.de/pocket Predicts ligand binding sites from protein structure
3DLigandSite http://www.sbg.bio.ic.ac.uk/~3dligandsite/ A threading-based method to predict ligand binding site
FINDSITE http://cssb.biology.gatech.edu/skolnick/files/FINDSITE A threading-based method to predict binding site, ligand, and function
pevoSOAR http://sts.bioengr.uic.edu/pevosoar Assigns up to four digit EC numbers based on local structure similarities
Catalytic Site Atlas http://www.ebi.ac.uk/thornton-srv/databases/CSA Database of known and predicted catalytic residues in the protein structures
FunClust http://pdbfun.uniroma2.it/funclust Identifies local functional motifs in the protein structures
GASPSdb http://gaspsdb.rbvi.ucsf.edu Database of 3D motifs generated by GASPS algorithm
SuMo http://sumo-pbil.ibcp.fr/cgi-bin/sumo-welcome 3D structure comparison based on local structure similarity
Par-3D http://sunserver.cdfd.org.in:8080/protease/PAR_3D/index.html Detects active site residues using 3D templates
PINTS http://www.russelllab.org/cgi-bin/tools/pints.pl 3D structure comparison based on non-sequential local motifs
Flora http://www.mcsg.anl.gov/ Assigns three digit EC numbers based on local structural similarities
GeMMA http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/dlee/GeMMA Provides classification based on phylogenetic analysis
SCI-PHY http://phylogenomics.berkeley.edu/ Provides classification based on phylogenetic analysis
PROTONET http://www.protonet.cs.huji.ac.il Classifies protein sequences based on phylogenetic analysis
SIFTER http://sifter.berkeley.edu Assigns GO terms based on phylogenetic analysis
PhylomeDB http://phylomedb.org/ Database of phylogenetic trees with ortholog assignments
TreeFam http://www.treefam.org/ Database of phylogenetic trees with ortholog assignments
ET http://mammoth.bcm.tmc.edu/ETserver.html Ranks amino acids based on phylgenetic analysis
ETA http://mammoth.bcm.tmc.edu/eta Assigns three digit EC numbers and GO terms based on local structural similarities