13

c

c

https://nfdi4microbiota.de (Dandekar is an affiliate).

In addition, within the framework of the Medical Informatics Initiative of the Federal

Ministry of Education and Research, there are several Germany-wide consortia to which

university hospitals and other partners (research institutes, universities, companies) have

joined forces.

c

c

https://www.medizininformatik-­initiative.de/de

For example, ten universities and university hospitals, two universities and one industrial

partner are working together in the MIRACUM consortium (Medical Informatics in Research

and Care in University Medicine) to establish an IT infrastructure for data from research and

patient care (data integration centres) and to make it usable for research projects in the long

term, for example for the development of predictive models and precision medicine.

c

c

https://www.miracum.org/ (consortium leader Medical Informatics FAU Erlangen-­

Nürnberg, Kunz is a partner).

1.2

Protein Analysis Is Easy with the Right Tool

An important special case is the analysis of proteins. Many experiments in molecular biol­

ogy focus on this particularly important type of molecule. Typically, general properties are

first determined by experiments, such as certain binding sites, the weight of the protein,

appearance, cofactors or catalytic properties. This is followed by detailed biochemical

analyses. The Swiss Bioinformatics Institute has compiled a detailed software package for

these numerous ways of analysing proteins. The site is again in English because such

analyses are carried out here from all over the world, namely with regard to the properties

of the protein sequence (secondary structure, amino acid composition and properties, anti­

genicity, etc.) as well as the protein structure, including the properties of the independent

folding units in the protein, the protein domains.

Analysis with BLAST

A good first step is the already mentioned BLAST. This allows a protein sequence (blastp)

to be compared for similar entries in a database, and also identifies conserved domains and

motifs, such as catalytic and active sites.

In addition, there are more precise and specific tools, which are presented below.

Entry Page on the Web: ExPASy (https://www.expasy.org)

The Swiss Bioinformatics Institute had initially (1990s) built up the Swiss-Prot database

under the direction of Amos Bairoch. It was particularly carefully maintained and still has

a very high degree of correctness and correction of entries, even though it has now essen­

tially been absorbed into the UniProt Knowledge base (UniProt KB):

1.2  Protein Analysis Is Easy with the Right Tool