Integration of the Pfam database and recent HHMER software developments. (360G-Wellcome-087656_Z_08_Z)

The Pfam protein families database is a key resource in protein sequence analysis, particularly for large-scale genome annotation and protein function inference. Pfam has operated as an international collaboration for over twelve years, with its main sites now located in Cambridge, Stockholm, and Washington DC. The core of the Pfam system, a set of comprehensive multiple sequence alignments of over 10,000 protein families, is built on top of a protein sequence analysis software package called HMMER. These protein families match 75% of sequences in protein sequence database such as UniProt, the highest coverage of any individual protein database. Pfam is also critical to the success of many other data resources, being subsumed into the integrative databases InterPro and Conserved Domain Database (CDD). Curation of the Pfam database and its web systems is largely the responsibility of the team at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, led by Alex Bateman and Rob Finn. Development of the HMMER software is largely the responsibility of the team at HHMI Janelia Farm outside Washington DC, led by Sean Eddy.