SWISS-PROT is a curated added-value protein sequence database which strives to provide a high level of annotations (such as the description of the function of a protein, its domains structure, post-translational modifications, variants, etc), a minimal level of redundancy and a high level of integration with other databases [1].
Development of SWISS-PROT in the last 12 months:
There are currently 86'600 protein sequence entries in SWISS-PROT which cite about 70'000 journal references. In the last 12 months, about 8'000 entries have been added to the database and about 20'000 entries have been the object of updates. We have started major projects to enhance the database by making format changes and adding new data fields. We have also launched two major initiatives:
- Human Proteomics Initiative (HPI). This major project deals with the annotation of all known human sequences according to the quality standards of SWISS-PROT. This means providing, for each known protein, a wealth of information that includes the description of its function, its domain structure, subcellular location, post-translational modifications, variants, similarities to other proteins, etc.
- High quality Automated Microbial Annotation of Proteomes (HAMAP). The HAMAP project aims to automatically annotate a significant percentage of proteins originating from microbial genome sequencing projects.
Access to SWISS-PROT:
The number of servers that redistribute the database keeps growing. There are probably more than 100 sites worldwide which allow access to SWISS-PROT. Our WWW server, ExPASy [2], registered 30 millions connections in the period from May 1999 to May 2000. It has now been accessed more than 80 million times since its creation in August 1993. Additional mirror sites have been created in Australia, Canada and China in addition to the previously existing site in Taiwan.
[1] Bairoch A. and Apweiler R.
Nucleic Acids Res. 28:45-48(2000).
[2]
http://www.expasy.ch/
