Database Commons

a catalog of worldwide biological databases

FunTree is a resource that brings together protein sequence, structure and functional information, including overall chemical reaction and mechanistic data, for structurally defined domain superfamilies. Developed in tandem with the CATH database, the original FunTree contained just 276 superfamilies focused on enzymes. Here, we present an update of FunTree that has expanded to include 2340 superfamilies including both enzymes and proteins with non-enzymatic functions annotated by Gene Ontology (GO) terms. This allows the investigation of how novel functions have evolved within a structurally defined superfamily and provides a means to analyse trends across many superfamilies. This is done not only within the context of a protein's sequence and structure but also the relationships of their functions. New measures of functional similarity have been integrated, including for enzymes comparisons of overall reactions based on overall bond changes, reaction centres (the local environment atoms involved in the reaction) and the sub-structure similarities of the metabolites involved in the reaction and for non-enzymes semantic similarities based on the GO. To identify and highlight changes in function through evolution, ancestral character estimations are made and presented. All this is accessible through a new re-designed web interface that can be found at http://www.funtree.info. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

FunTree is a new resource that brings together sequence, structure, phylogenetic, chemical and mechanistic information for structurally defined enzyme superfamilies. Gathering together this range of data into a single resource allows the investigation of how novel enzyme functions have evolved within a structurally defined superfamily as well as providing a means to analyse trends across many superfamilies. This is done not only within the context of an enzyme's sequence and structure but also the relationships of their reactions. Developed in tandem with the CATH database, it currently comprises 276 superfamilies covering ~1800 (70%) of sequence assigned enzyme reactions. Central to the resource are phylogenetic trees generated from structurally informed multiple sequence alignments using both domain structural alignments supplemented with domain sequences and whole sequence alignments based on commonality of multi-domain architectures. These trees are decorated with functional annotations such as metabolite similarity as well as annotations from manually curated resources such the catalytic site atlas and MACiE for enzyme mechanisms. The resource is freely available through a web interface: www.ebi.ac.uk/thorton-srv/databases/FunTree.