Abstract
The Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP) database is a classification of protein domains organised according to their evolutionary and structural relationships. We report a major ...effort to increase the coverage of structural data, aiming to provide classification of almost all domain superfamilies with representatives in the PDB. We have also improved the database schema, provided a new API and modernised the web interface. This is by far the most significant update in coverage since SCOP 1.75 and builds on the advances in schema from the SCOP 2 prototype. The database is accessible from http://scop.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk.
We present a prototype of a new structural classification of proteins, SCOP2 (http://scop2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/), that we have developed recently. SCOP2 is a successor to the Structural Classification ...of Proteins (SCOP, http://scop.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/scop/) database. Similarly to SCOP, the main focus of SCOP2 is to organize structurally characterized proteins according to their structural and evolutionary relationships. SCOP2 was designed to provide a more advanced framework for protein structure annotation and classification. It defines a new approach to the classification of proteins that is essentially different from SCOP, but retains its best features. The SCOP2 classification is described in terms of a directed acyclic graph in which nodes form a complex network of many-to-many relationships and are represented by a region of protein structure and sequence. The new classification project is expected to ensure new advances in the field and open new areas of research.
The maturing field of genomics is rapidly increasing the number of sequenced genomes and producing more information from those previously sequenced. Much of this additional information is variation ...data derived from sampling multiple individuals of a given species with the goal of discovering new variants and characterising the population frequencies of the variants that are already known. These data have immense value for many studies, including those designed to understand evolution and connect genotype to phenotype. Maximising the utility of the data requires that it be stored in an accessible manner that facilitates the integration of variation data with other genome resources such as gene annotation and comparative genomics.
The Ensembl project provides comprehensive and integrated variation resources for a wide variety of chordate genomes. This paper provides a detailed description of the sources of data and the methods for creating the Ensembl variation databases. It also explores the utility of the information by explaining the range of query options available, from using interactive web displays, to online data mining tools and connecting directly to the data servers programmatically. It gives a good overview of the variation resources and future plans for expanding the variation data within Ensembl.
Variation data is an important key to understanding the functional and phenotypic differences between individuals. The development of new sequencing and genotyping technologies is greatly increasing the amount of variation data known for almost all genomes. The Ensembl variation resources are integrated into the Ensembl genome browser and provide a comprehensive way to access this data in the context of a widely used genome bioinformatics system. All Ensembl data is freely available at http://www.ensembl.org and from the public MySQL database server at ensembldb.ensembl.org.
DNA methylation is an indispensible epigenetic modification required for regulating the expression of mammalian genomes. Immunoprecipitation-based methods for DNA methylome analysis are rapidly ...shifting the bottleneck in this field from data generation to data analysis, necessitating the development of better analytical tools. In particular, an inability to estimate absolute methylation levels remains a major analytical difficulty associated with immunoprecipitation-based DNA methylation profiling. To address this issue, we developed a cross-platform algorithm-Bayesian tool for methylation analysis (Batman)-for analyzing methylated DNA immunoprecipitation (MeDIP) profiles generated using oligonucleotide arrays (MeDIP-chip) or next-generation sequencing (MeDIP-seq). We developed the latter approach to provide a high-resolution whole-genome DNA methylation profile (DNA methylome) of a mammalian genome. Strong correlation of our data, obtained using mature human spermatozoa, with those obtained using bisulfite sequencing suggest that combining MeDIP-seq or MeDIP-chip with Batman provides a robust, quantitative and cost-effective functional genomic strategy for elucidating the function of DNA methylation.
We report a novel resource (methylation profiles of DNA, or mPod) for human genome-wide tissue-specific DNA methylation profiles. mPod consists of three fully integrated parts, genome-wide DNA ...methylation reference profiles of 13 normal somatic tissues, placenta, sperm, and an immortalized cell line, a visualization tool that has been integrated with the Ensembl genome browser and a new algorithm for the analysis of immunoprecipitation-based DNA methylation profiles. We demonstrate the utility of our resource by identifying the first comprehensive genome-wide set of tissue-specific differentially methylated regions (tDMRs) that may play a role in cellular identity and the regulation of tissue-specific genome function. We also discuss the implications of our findings with respect to the regulatory potential of regions with varied CpG density, gene expression, transcription factor motifs, gene ontology, and correlation with other epigenetic marks such as histone modifications.
The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) is a widely adopted protocol for dynamically integrating a wide range of biological data from geographically diverse sources. DAS continues to expand its ...applicability and evolve in response to new challenges facing integrative bioinformatics.
Here we describe the various infrastructure components of DAS and present a new extended version of the DAS specification. Version 1.53E incorporates several recent developments, including its extension to serve new data types and an ontology for protein features.
Our extensions to the DAS protocol have facilitated the integration of new data types, and our improvements to the existing DAS infrastructure have addressed recent challenges. The steadily increasing numbers of available data sources demonstrates further adoption of the DAS protocol.
The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) is a network protocol for exchanging biological data. It is frequently used to share annotations of genomes and protein sequence.
Here we present several ...extensions to the current DAS 1.5 protocol. These provide new commands to share alignments, three dimensional molecular structure data, add the possibility for registration and discovery of DAS servers, and provide a convention how to provide different types of data plots. We present examples of web sites and applications that use the new extensions. We operate a public registry of DAS sources, which now includes entries for more than 250 distinct sources.
Our DAS extensions are essential for the management of the growing number of services and exchange of diverse biological data sets. In addition the extensions allow new types of applications to be developed and scientific questions to be addressed. The registry of DAS sources is available at http://www.dasregistry.org.
The increasing size and complexity of biological databases has led to a growing trend to federate rather than duplicate them. In order to share data between federated databases, protocols for the ...exchange mechanism must be developed. One such data exchange protocol that is widely used is the Distributed Annotation System (DAS). For example, DAS has enabled small experimental groups to integrate their data into the Ensembl genome browser. We have developed ProServer, a simple, lightweight, Perl-based DAS server that does not depend on a separate HTTP server. The ProServer package is easily extensible, allowing data to be served from almost any underlying data model. Recent additions to the DAS protocol have enabled both structure and alignment (sequence and structural) data to be exchanged. ProServer allows both of these data types to be served.
Availability: ProServer can be downloaded from http://www.sanger.ac.uk/proserver/ or CPAN http://search.cpan.org/~rpettett/. Details on the system requirements and installation of ProServer can be found at http://www.sanger.ac.uk/proserver/.
Contact:
rmp@sanger.ac.uk
Supplementary Materials: DasClientExamples.pdf
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