ElastoDB

ElastoDB catalogs elastin and other highly repetitive proteins such as spider silks, resilin, and abductin, and identifies conserved and taxon-specific 'fuzzy' motifs to support analysis of sequence, structure, function, and evolution.

Key Features:

• Repository of Elastin Sequences: A curated collection of elastin sequences from mammals, chickens, Xenopus, zebrafish, and fugu with associated sequence- and meta-data.
• Innovative Computational Approach: A method for analyzing sequence relationships in repetitive proteins that identifies overrepresented 'fuzzy' motifs indicative of functional or structural elements.
• Motif Identification and Analysis: Detection of both highly conserved motifs and motifs specific to particular taxa or species to inform functional and structural interpretation.
• Evolutionary Insights through Exon Duplication Events: Clustering of similarity profiles for exons and introns to reveal putative exon duplication events influencing elastin evolution.
• Research Applications: Enables investigation of sequence, structure, function, and evolutionary relationships in low complexity and repetitive proteins beyond elastin.

Scientific Applications:

• Comparative sequence and motif analysis: Analysis of conserved and taxon-specific motifs to study functional and structural relationships among elastin and other repetitive proteins.
• Evolutionary inference: Detection and interpretation of exon duplication events and similarity-profile clustering to study evolutionary trends in elastin sequences.

Methodology:

Construction of a database repository storing elastin sequence- and meta-data, identification of overrepresented 'fuzzy' motifs in sequences, and clustering of similarity profiles for exons and introns to detect putative exon duplication events.