UniProt is the universal protein database, a central repository of protein data created by combining Swiss-Prot, TrEMBL and PIR. This makes it the world's most comprehensive resource on protein information. A representation of the 3D structure of myoglobin, showing coloured alpha helices. ... Swiss-Prot is a curated biological database of protein sequences created in 1986 by Amos Bairoch during his PhD and developed by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the European Bioinformatics Institute. ... TrEMBL, Translated EMBL is a very large protein database in Swiss-Prot format generated by computer translation of the genetic information from the EMBL database. ... The introduction of this article does not provide enough context for readers unfamiliar with the subject. ...

The UniProt Consortium

The UniProt Consortium is comprised of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), and the Protein Information Resource (PIR). EBI, located at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus in Hinxton, UK, hosts a large resource of bioinformatics databases and services. SIB, located in Geneva, Switzerland, maintains the ExPASy (Expert Protein Analysis System) servers that are a central resource for proteomics tools and databases. PIR, hosted by the National Biomedical Research Foundation (NBRF) at the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC, USA, is heir to the oldest protein sequence database, Margaret Dayhoff's Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure. In 2002, EBI, SIB, and PIR joined forces as the UniProt Consortium. The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) part of EMBL is a centre for research and services in bioinformatics. ... The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) is an academic not-for-profit foundation established on March 30, 1998 whose mission is: to promote research, develop databanks and computer technologies, and be involved with teaching and service activities in the field of bioinformatics in Switzerland with international collaborations. ... Pir is the term for a pilgrimage site in Farsi, frequently one of the Zoroastrian faith. ...

The Roots of UniProt Databases

Each consortium member is heavily involved in protein database maintenance and annotation. Until recently, EBI and SIB together produced Swiss-Prot and TrEMBL, while PIR produced the Protein Sequence Database (PIR-PSD). These databases coexisted with differing protein sequence coverage and annotation priorities. Swiss-Prot is recognized as the gold standard of protein annotation, with extensive cross-references, literature citations, and computational analyses provided by expert curators. Recognizing that sequence data were being generated at a pace exceeding Swiss-Prot's ability to keep up, TrEMBL (Translated EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Data Library) was created to provide automated annotations for those proteins not in Swiss-Prot. Meanwhile, PIR maintained the PIR-PSD and related databases, including iProClass, a database of protein sequences and curated families. The consortium members — all dedicated to the same goal of providing expansive and meaningful protein annotation, and all with solid foundations stemming from decades of activity — decided to pool their overlapping (and, importantly, their complementary) resources, efforts, and expertise. The UniProt databases build upon these solid foundations. Swiss-Prot is a curated biological database of protein sequences created in 1986 by Amos Bairoch during his PhD and developed by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the European Bioinformatics Institute. ... TrEMBL, Translated EMBL is a very large protein database in Swiss-Prot format generated by computer translation of the genetic information from the EMBL database. ... iProClass The iProClass database provides value-added information reports for UniProtKB and unique UniParc proteins, with links to over 90 biological databases, including databases for protein families, functions and pathways, interactions, structures and structural classifications, genes and genomes, ontologies, literature, and taxonomy. ...

Organization of UniProt Databases

The UniProt databases consist of three database layers:

• The UniProt Archive (UniParc) provides a stable, comprehensive sequence collection without redundant sequences by storing the complete body of publicly available protein sequence data.

• The UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProtKB) is the central database of protein sequences with accurate, consistent, and rich sequence and functional annotation.

• The UniProt Reference Clusters (UniRef) databases provide non-redundant reference data collections based on the UniProt knowledgebase in order to obtain complete coverage of sequence space at several resolutions.

Funding for UniProt

UniProt is mainly supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant 1 U01 HG02712-01. Minor support for the EBI's involvement in UniProt comes from the two European Union contracts BioBabel (QLRT-2000-00981) and TEMBLOR (QLRI-2001-00015) and from the NIH grant 1R01HGO2273-01. NIH can refer to: National Institutes of Health Norwegian School of Sports Sciences: (Norges idrettshøgskole - NIH) Not Invented Here This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

External references

• ebi.uniprot.org
• pir.uniprot.org
• expassy.uniprot.org