UniProtKB

UniProtKB provides a curated knowledgebase of protein sequences and functional annotations to support protein-centric bioinformatics analyses.

Key Features:

• Integrated Data Sources: Synthesizes literature-derived information and data from multiple biological resources to produce standardized protein records.
• Biocuration and Consortium: Expert biocuration is performed by the UniProt Consortium (European Bioinformatics Institute, SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Protein Information Resource) producing manually reviewed annotations.
• UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot: Contains manually annotated records with curator-evaluated computational analyses.
• UniProtKB/TrEMBL: Contains computationally analyzed records that are pending manual annotation.
• Extensive Sequence Collection: Contains over 80 million protein sequences reflecting large-scale genomic data growth.
• Accession Number Expansion: Accession space was extended from six to ten characters to accommodate new entries.
• Proteome Identifier and Annotation Score: Provides proteome identifiers for specific assemblies and an annotation score quantifying the relative amount of known information per entry.
• Update Frequency: Curated data are released on a four-week update cycle.

Scientific Applications:

• Functional Genomics: Supports assignment and analysis of protein functions derived from genomic and transcriptomic data.
• Comparative Proteomics: Enables comparison of proteins across species using annotation scores to identify well-characterized entries.
• Bioinformatics Research: Supplies standardized, comprehensive protein data for algorithm development, annotation transfer, and large-scale analyses.
• Genomic Projects and Provenance Tracking: Facilitates tracking of sequence provenance and specific assemblies via unique proteome identifiers.

Methodology:

UniProtKB combines manual expert biocuration (including literature evaluation and data integration by the UniProt Consortium: EBI, SIB, PIR) with computational analyses to generate and update protein annotations.