Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2012, 13(10), 12761-12772; doi:10.3390/ijms131012761
Communication

Proteins of Unknown Function in the Protein Data Bank (PDB): An Inventory of True Uncharacterized Proteins and Computational Tools for Their Analysis

Nurul Nadzirinemail and Mohd Firdaus-Raih* email
School of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Malaysia
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 11 September 2012; in revised form: 21 September 2012 / Accepted: 21 September 2012 / Published: 8 October 2012
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Protein Crystallography in Molecular Biology)
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Abstract: Proteins of uncharacterized functions form a large part of many of the currently available biological databases and this situation exists even in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Our analysis of recent PDB data revealed that only 42.53% of PDB entries (1084 coordinate files) that were categorized under “unknown function” are true examples of proteins of unknown function at this point in time. The remainder 1465 entries also annotated as such appear to be able to have their annotations re-assessed, based on the availability of direct functional characterization experiments for the protein itself, or for homologous sequences or structures thus enabling computational function inference.
Keywords: Protein Data Bank; proteins of uncharacterized function; proteins of unknown function; structural similarity; 3D motifs

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MDPI and ACS Style

Nadzirin, N.; Firdaus-Raih, M. Proteins of Unknown Function in the Protein Data Bank (PDB): An Inventory of True Uncharacterized Proteins and Computational Tools for Their Analysis. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2012, 13, 12761-12772.

AMA Style

Nadzirin N, Firdaus-Raih M. Proteins of Unknown Function in the Protein Data Bank (PDB): An Inventory of True Uncharacterized Proteins and Computational Tools for Their Analysis. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2012; 13(10):12761-12772.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Nadzirin, Nurul; Firdaus-Raih, Mohd. 2012. "Proteins of Unknown Function in the Protein Data Bank (PDB): An Inventory of True Uncharacterized Proteins and Computational Tools for Their Analysis." Int. J. Mol. Sci. 13, no. 10: 12761-12772.

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