Automated Improvement of Domain ANnotations using context analysis of domain arrangements (AIDAN)

Bioinformatics. 2007 Jul 15;23(14):1834-6. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btm240. Epub 2007 May 5.

Abstract

Motivation: Since protein domains are the units of evolution, databases of domain signatures such as ProDom or Pfam enable both a sensitive and selective sequence analysis. However, manually curated databases have a low coverage and automatically generated ones often miss relationships which have not yet been discovered between domains or cannot display similarities between domains which have drifted apart.

Methods: We present a tool which makes use of the fact that overall domain arrangements are often conserved. AIDAN (Automated Improvement of Domain ANnotations) identifies potential annotation artifacts and domains which have drifted apart. The underlying database supplements ProDom and is interfaced by a graphical tool allowing the localization of single domain deletions or annotations which have been falsely made by the automated procedure.

Availability: http://www.uni-muenster.de/Evolution/ebb/Services/AIDAN.

Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Automation
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Databases, Factual
  • Information Storage and Retrieval
  • Internet
  • Protein Conformation
  • Protein Structure, Tertiary
  • Proteins / chemistry*
  • Sequence Alignment
  • Software
  • User-Computer Interface

Substances

  • Proteins