Title: The e-motif database of the Brutlag Bioinformatics group at Stanford

URL: http://motif.stanford.edu/projects.html

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 e-motif database can scan input sequences to detect the presence of known protein motifs and also to define novel motifs shared by a group of aligned sequences (see example)
 

Strengths:
Can recognize novel motifs and also scan GenBank to identify novel family members.  Powerful engine, can accept multiple input sequences simultaneously
 

Weaknesses:
Not much information about the motifs themselves
 

Comprehensiveness:
Very comprehensive
Over 50,000 motifs represented
 
 

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

Ease of Use:
 Quite easy to use- not as good interface as PRINTS

Responsiveness:
Did not test
 

Similar or Related sites:
PRINTS database
Protein families database (PFAM) at WUSTL

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