IDA2GO - Improving Domain Annotation and Representation within InterPro

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Protein domains are discrete, stable structures within proteins. They typically form distinct operational units with responsibility for specific functions, such as binding a given molecule or catalyzing a specific step in an enzymatic reaction. To fully understand a protein's biological role, it is necessary to understand domain distribution, evolution and function.The core concept of InterPro is that if two proteins look similar (either structurally and/or at the sequence-level), there is a strong possibility that they will have a similar or identical function. The similarities and differences between proteins that have the same function or structure can be modelled; InterPro calls the resultant predictive models "signatures". InterPro uses signatures from several different databases (each of which has a particular niche or biological focus) to predict information about proteins. InterPro integrates together signatures if they appear to represent the same protein family, domain or site. In addition, concise information about the signatures and the types of proteins they match is added, including terms from the Gene Ontology (GO), a controlled vocabulary that is used to describe biological functions, processes and the subcellular localisation of genes in a standardised way. InterPro regularly calculates the presence of domains in sequences from the UniProtKB protein knowledgebase. It makes this information available through websites and software tools. However, the manner in which these data are displayed and calculated is sub-optimal and can lead to confusion for the biologists attempting to use them. Similarly, because domains can be found in proteins which have quite different overall functions, it is difficult to accurately annotate individual domains with GO terms.The IDA2GO project intends to improve the way that domains are represented and annotated within the InterPro database so that scientists are able to utilise these data for the functional annotation of genomes, the discovery of novel domains and to better understand how proteins evolve.