Title:  Protein Fingerprints database

URL: http://www.bioinf.man.ac.uk/dbbrowser/PRINTS/

Date Reviewed: 5/8/00

Description: Protein fingerprints are groups of motifs that are shared by members of a family.  These are generated by computer analysis of multiple sequence alignments and can provide information about the biological properties and function of the protein. The PRINTS database catalogs and describes all the protein fingerprints recognized to date. One can also get information on the literature describing this PRINT as well as identify other proteins that contain this PRINT.

Strengths:
Provide comprehensive information on each motif: single/composite; reliability, other family members, studies in the literature.  Excellent secondary site for getting additional information on functional motifs that one has identified using other databases like e-motif
 

Weaknesses:
Cannot search input sequences to define novel motifs/fingerprints.  This can be done using the complementary e-motif site at Stanford (see related links, below).  Also cannot do a BLAST search to identify other members of these families present in GenBank
 

Comprehensiveness:
Quite comprehensive
1310 FINGERPRINTS, encoding 7897 single motifs
These motifs include, for instance, the DNA binding motifs for p53 (see example), myc and antennapedia as well as for the fos and jun proteins
 

Timeliness:
Good- search results are usually obtained within 1 minute

Ease of Use:
Easy to use- good interface and extensive support/explanation with complete tutorials

Responsiveness:
Did not test
 

Similar or Related sites:
e-motif database at Stanford
Protein families database (PFAM) at WUSTL

Overall Rating: 1 to 5 stars:
3.5 = very good