Protein Domain Architectures

Proteins are composed of functional units, or domains, that can be found alone or in combination with other domains. Analysis of protein domain architectures and the movement of protein domains within and across different genomes provide clues about the evolution of protein function. The classification of proteins into families and domains is provided through publicly available tools and databases that use known protein domains to predict other members in new proteins sequences. Currently at least 80% of the main protein sequence databases can be classified using these tools, thus providing a large data set to work from for analyzing protein domain architectures. Each of the protein domain databases provide intuitive web interfaces for viewing and analyzing their domain classifications and provide their data freely for downloading. Some of the main protein family and domain databases are described here, along with their Web-based tools for analyzing domain architectures.