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Fast Breaking Comments

By Dr. Alex Bateman

ESI Special Topics, December 2002
Citing URL - http://www.esi-topics.com/fbp/comments/december02-AlexBateman.html

Dr. Alex Bateman answers a few questions about this month's fast breaking paper in the field of Biology & Biochemistry.

From •>>December 2002

 Field: Biology & Biochemistry
 Article Title: "The Pfam Protein Families Database"
 Authors: Bateman, A;Birney, E;Cerruti, L;Durbin, R;Etwiller, L;Eddy, SR;Griffiths-Jones, S;Howe, KL;Marshall, M;Sonnhammer, ELL
Journal: NUCL ACID RES
Volume: 30
Page: 276-280
Year: JAN 1 2002
* Wellcome Trust Sanger Inst, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge CB10 1SA, England.
* Wellcome Trust Sanger Inst, Cambridge CB10 1SA, England.
* European Bioinformat Inst, Cambridge CB10 1SA, England.
* ISREC, SIB, CH-1066 Epalinges, Switzerland.
* Washington Univ, Sch Med, Dept Genet, St Louis, MO 63110 USA.
* Karolinska Inst, Ctr Genom & Bioinformat, S-17177 Stockholm, Sweden.

ST:  Why do you think your paper is highly cited?

Pfam is a database of protein families that provides coverage of most proteins. So for most biologists Pfam is likely to contain some useful information, such as multiple sequence alignments.

ST:  Does it describe a new discovery or a new methodology that's useful to others?

The paper provides an update on a well-known and highly used resource. It is an opportunity for us to let people know about new features and methods that we use to improve our service.

ST:  What were some of the circumstances that led you to do this research?

I have always been interested in discovering new protein domains and families. Along with the discoveries of others, Pfam provides a reliable way to store this information and share it with the research community.

ST:  Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms?

Understanding protein function is one of the greatest challenges in biology. Databases such as Pfam, Prosite, and SMART provide a way to help biologists infer function for new proteinsEnd.

Dr. Alex Bateman
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
Hinxton, UK

ESI Special Topics, December 2002
Citing URL - http://www.esi-topics.com/fbp/comments/december02-AlexBateman.html

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