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. 2014 Jan;42(Database issue):D503-9.
doi: 10.1093/nar/gkt953. Epub 2013 Oct 23.

MEROPS: the database of proteolytic enzymes, their substrates and inhibitors

Neil D Rawlings  1 , Matthew Waller, Alan J Barrett, Alex Bateman
Affiliations

MEROPS: the database of proteolytic enzymes, their substrates and inhibitors

Neil D Rawlings et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 2014 Jan.

Abstract

Peptidases, their substrates and inhibitors are of great relevance to biology, medicine and biotechnology. The MEROPS database (http://merops.sanger.ac.uk) aims to fulfill the need for an integrated source of information about these. The database has hierarchical classifications in which homologous sets of peptidases and protein inhibitors are grouped into protein species, which are grouped into families, which are in turn grouped into clans. Recent developments include the following. A community annotation project has been instigated in which acknowledged experts are invited to contribute summaries for peptidases. Software has been written to provide an Internet-based data entry form. Contributors are acknowledged on the relevant web page. A new display showing the intron/exon structures of eukaryote peptidase genes and the phasing of the junctions has been implemented. It is now possible to filter the list of peptidases from a completely sequenced bacterial genome for a particular strain of the organism. The MEROPS filing pipeline has been altered to circumvent the restrictions imposed on non-interactive blastp searches, and a HMMER search using specially generated alignments to maximize the distribution of organisms returned in the search results has been added.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Form for the submission of a peptidase summary for the MEROPS community annotation project. The summary for carboxypeptidase A6 (MEROPS identifier M14.018) is shown. The summary was kindly provided by Professor Lloyd Fricker.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Example of a complete peptidase summary. The summary for DNA-damage inducible protein 1 (MEROPS identifier A28.001) is shown. The summary was kindly supplied by Dr Colin Berry.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Example of a gene structure. The gene structures for cathepsin E (MEROPS identifier A01.010) are shown.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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