Database Commons

a catalog of worldwide biological databases

The Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP) database is a classification of protein domains organised according to their evolutionary and structural relationships. We report a major effort to increase the coverage of structural data, aiming to provide classification of almost all domain superfamilies with representatives in the PDB. We have also improved the database schema, provided a new API and modernised the web interface. This is by far the most significant update in coverage since SCOP 1.75 and builds on the advances in schema from the SCOP 2 prototype. The database is accessible from http://scop.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk.

The SCOP (Structural Classification of Proteins) database is a comprehensive ordering of all proteins of known structure, according to their evolutionary and structural relationships. Protein domains in SCOP are grouped into species and hierarchically classified into families, superfamilies, folds and classes. Recently, we introduced a new set of features with the aim of standardizing access to the database, and providing a solid basis to manage the increasing number of experimental structures expected from structural genomics projects. These features include: a new set of identifiers, which uniquely identify each entry in the hierarchy; a compact representation of protein domain classification; a new set of parseable files, which fully describe all domains in SCOP and the hierarchy itself. These new features are reflected in the ASTRAL compendium. The SCOP search engine has also been updated, and a set of links to external resources added at the level of domain entries. SCOP can be accessed at http://scop.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/scop.

To facilitate understanding of, and access to, the information available for protein structures, we have constructed the Structural Classification of Proteins (scop) database. This database provides a detailed and comprehensive description of the structural and evolutionary relationships of the proteins of known structure. It also provides for each entry links to co-ordinates, images of the structure, interactive viewers, sequence data and literature references. Two search facilities are available. The homology search permits users to enter a sequence and obtain a list of any structures to which it has significant levels of sequence similarity. The key word search finds, for a word entered by the user, matches from both the text of the scop database and the headers of Brookhaven Protein Databank structure files. The database is freely accessible on World Wide Web (WWW) with an entry point to URL http: parallel scop.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk magnitude of scop.