TopFIND

TopFIND catalogs protein N- and C-termini, their modifications, and proteolytic processing events to support analysis of protein functional states and protease–substrate relationships.

Key Features:

• Protein-Centric Framework: Built around a protein-centric framework with terminome coverage for Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, Arabidopsis thaliana, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Escherichia coli.
• Integration of Diverse Data Sources: Aggregates data from curated community submissions, scientific publications, UniProtKB, and MEROPS to create a consolidated terminome resource.
• Detailed Evidence Classification: Classifies and describes evidence supporting cleavage sites, termini, and modifications and provides filters to select specific types of supporting evidence.
• Dynamic Network Representation: Represents relationships between proteases, their substrates, and inhibitors and visualizes protease cleavage site specificities within interaction networks.
• Visualization Tools: Visualizes cleavage events in relation to protein domains and mutations to enable correlation of proteolytic events with structural and sequence features.

Scientific Applications:

• Functional analysis of protein processing: Investigates how N- and C-terminal modifications affect protein function, stability, localization, and interactions.
• Disease mechanism and therapeutic target discovery: Correlates proteolytic events with protein domains and mutations to inform understanding of disease mechanisms and potential therapeutic targets.
• Comparative and evolutionary proteomics: Leverages cross-species terminome data for comparative proteomics and evolutionary biology studies.
• Proteome-wide proteolytic profiling: Supports proteome-wide exploration of proteolytic processing events using aggregated terminome data.

Methodology:

Aggregation of terminome data from multiple sources followed by rigorous curation and classification of termini, cleavage sites, and modifications, supporting proteome-wide exploration and leveraging recent advances in proteomics approaches.