Database Commons

a catalog of worldwide biological databases

The OpenProt proteogenomic resource (https://www.openprot.org/) provides users with a complete and freely accessible set of non-canonical or alternative open reading frames (AltORFs) within the transcriptome of various species, as well as functional annotations of the corresponding protein sequences not found in standard databases. Enhancements in this update are largely the result of user feedback and include the prediction of structure, subcellular localization, and intrinsic disorder, using cutting-edge algorithms based on machine learning techniques. The mass spectrometry pipeline now integrates a machine learning-based peptide rescoring method to improve peptide identification. We continue to help users explore this cryptic proteome by providing OpenCustomDB, a tool that enables users to build their own customized protein databases, and OpenVar, a genomic annotator including genetic variants within AltORFs and protein sequences. A new interface improves the visualization of all functional annotations, including a spectral viewer and the prediction of multicoding genes. All data on OpenProt are freely available and downloadable. Overall, OpenProt continues to establish itself as an important resource for the exploration and study of new proteins.

OpenProt (www.openprot.org) is the first proteogenomic resource supporting a polycistronic annotation model for eukaryotic genomes. It provides a deeper annotation of open reading frames (ORFs) while mining experimental data for supporting evidence using cutting-edge algorithms. This update presents the major improvements since the initial release of OpenProt. All species support recent NCBI RefSeq and Ensembl annotations, with changes in annotations being reported in OpenProt. Using the 131 ribosome profiling datasets re-analysed by OpenProt to date, non-AUG initiation starts are reported alongside a confidence score of the initiating codon. From the 177 mass spectrometry datasets re-analysed by OpenProt to date, the unicity of the detected peptides is controlled at each implementation. Furthermore, to guide the users, detectability statistics and protein relationships (isoforms) are now reported for each protein. Finally, to foster access to deeper ORF annotation independently of one's bioinformatics skills or computational resources, OpenProt now offers a data analysis platform. Users can submit their dataset for analysis and receive the results from the analysis by OpenProt. All data on OpenProt are freely available and downloadable for each species, the release-based format ensuring a continuous access to the data. Thus, OpenProt enables a more comprehensive annotation of eukaryotic genomes and fosters functional proteomic discoveries.

Advances in proteomics and sequencing have highlighted many non-annotated open reading frames (ORFs) in eukaryotic genomes. Genome annotations, cornerstones of today's research, mostly rely on protein prior knowledge and on ab initio prediction algorithms. Such algorithms notably enforce an arbitrary criterion of one coding sequence (CDS) per transcript, leading to a substantial underestimation of the coding potential of eukaryotes. Here, we present OpenProt, the first database fully endorsing a polycistronic model of eukaryotic genomes to date. OpenProt contains all possible ORFs longer than 30 codons across 10 species, and cumulates supporting evidence such as protein conservation, translation and expression. OpenProt annotates all known proteins (RefProts), novel predicted isoforms (Isoforms) and novel predicted proteins from alternative ORFs (AltProts). It incorporates cutting-edge algorithms to evaluate protein orthology and re-interrogate publicly available ribosome profiling and mass spectrometry datasets, supporting the annotation of thousands of predicted ORFs. The constantly growing database currently cumulates evidence from 87 ribosome profiling and 114 mass spectrometry studies from several species, tissues and cell lines. All data is freely available and downloadable from a web platform (www.openprot.org) supporting a genome browser and advanced queries for each species. Thus, OpenProt enables a more comprehensive landscape of eukaryotic genomes' coding potential.