Biomedical subjects

Rune Linding

Publications and source records attributed to Rune Linding.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

GlobPlot: Exploring protein sequences for globularity and disorder.

A major challenge in the proteomics and structural genomics era is to predict protein structure and function, including identification of those proteins that are partially or wholly unstructured. Non-globular sequence segments often contain short linear peptide motifs (e.g. SH3-binding sites) which are important for protein function. We present here a new tool for discovery of such unstructured, or disordered regions within proteins. GlobPlot (http://globplot.embl.de) is a web service that allows the user to plot the tendency within the query protein for order/globularity and disorder. We show examples with known proteins where it successfully identifies inter-domain segments containing linear motifs, and also apparently ordered regions that do not contain any recognised domain. GlobPlot may be useful in domain hunting efforts. The plots indicate that instances of known domains may often contain additional N- or C-terminal segments that appear ordered. Thus GlobPlot may be of use in the design of constructs corresponding to globular proteins, as needed for many biochemical studies, particularly structural biology. GlobPlot has a pipeline interface--GlobPipe--for the advanced user to do whole proteome analysis. GlobPlot can also be used as a generic infrastructure package for graphical displaying of any possible propensity.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2003

BLAST2SRS, a web server for flexible retrieval of related protein sequences in the SWISS-PROT and SPTrEMBL databases.

SRS (Sequence Retrieval System) is a widely used keyword search engine for querying biological databases. BLAST2 is the most widely used tool to query databases by sequence similarity search. These tools allow users to retrieve sequences by shared keyword or by shared similarity, with many public web servers available. However, with the increasingly large datasets available it is now quite common that a user is interested in some subset of homologous sequences but has no efficient way to restrict retrieval to that set. By allowing the user to control SRS from the BLAST output, BLAST2SRS (http://blast2srs.embl.de/) aims to meet this need. This server therefore combines the two ways to search sequence databases: similarity and keyword.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

ELM server: A new resource for investigating short functional sites in modular eukaryotic proteins.

Multidomain proteins predominate in eukaryotic proteomes. Individual functions assigned to different sequence segments combine to create a complex function for the whole protein. While on-line resources are available for revealing globular domains in sequences, there has hitherto been no comprehensive collection of small functional sites/motifs comparable to the globular domain resources, yet these are as important for the function of multidomain proteins. Short linear peptide motifs are used for cell compartment targeting, protein-protein interaction, regulation by phosphorylation, acetylation, glycosylation and a host of other post-translational modifications. ELM, the Eukaryotic Linear Motif server at http://elm.eu.org/, is a new bioinformatics resource for investigating candidate short non-globular functional motifs in eukaryotic proteins, aiming to fill the void in bioinformatics tools. Sequence comparisons with short motifs are difficult to evaluate because the usual significance assessments are inappropriate. Therefore the server is implemented with several logical filters to eliminate false positives. Current filters are for cell compartment, globular domain clash and taxonomic range. In favourable cases, the filters can reduce the number of retained matches by an order of magnitude or more.

Amino Acid Motifs↗

PubMed2003

Protein disorder prediction: implications for structural proteomics.

A great challenge in the proteomics and structural genomics era is to predict protein structure and function, including identification of those proteins that are partially or wholly unstructured. Disordered regions in proteins often contain short linear peptide motifs (e.g., SH3 ligands and targeting signals) that are important for protein function. We present here DisEMBL, a computational tool for prediction of disordered/unstructured regions within a protein sequence. As no clear definition of disorder exists, we have developed parameters based on several alternative definitions and introduced a new one based on the concept of "hot loops," i.e., coils with high temperature factors. Avoiding potentially disordered segments in protein expression constructs can increase expression, foldability, and stability of the expressed protein. DisEMBL is thus useful for target selection and the design of constructs as needed for many biochemical studies, particularly structural biology and structural genomics projects. The tool is freely available via a web interface (http://dis.embl.de) and can be downloaded for use in large-scale studies.

Circular Dichroism↗

PubMed2002

Normalization of nomenclature for peptide motifs as ligands of modular protein domains.

We propose a normalization of symbols and terms used to describe, accurately and succinctly, the detailed interactions between amino acid residues of pairs of interacting proteins at protein:protein (or protein:peptide) interfaces. Our aim is to unify several diverse descriptions currently in use in order to facilitate communication in the rapidly progressing field of signaling by protein domains. In order for the nomenclature to be convenient and widely used, we also suggest a parallel set of symbols restricted to the ASCII format allowing accurate parsing of the nomenclature to a computer-readable form. This proposal will be reviewed in the future and will therefore be open for the inclusion of new rules, modifications and changes.

Binding Sites↗