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The MPI bioinformatics Toolkit as an integrative platform for advanced protein sequence and structure analysis
Vikram Alva1, Seung-Zin Nam2, Johannes Söding3
1Department of Protein Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen D-72076, Germany vikram.alva@tuebingen.mpg.de.
Nucleic Acids Research
|May 1, 2016
Summary
The MPI Bioinformatics Toolkit provides integrated protein analysis tools for researchers and students. This decade-long evolution includes new features and infrastructure to support increasing user demand in bioinformatics.
Area of Science:
- Bioinformatics
- Computational Biology
- Proteomics
Background:
- The MPI Bioinformatics Toolkit has been a publicly available web service since 2008.
- It offers a wide range of interconnected bioinformatics tools for protein analysis.
- The platform has served over 1.6 million user queries, with usage increasing annually.
Purpose of the Study:
- To report on the evolution of the MPI Bioinformatics Toolkit over the past ten years.
- To highlight the expansion of its tool repertoire and infrastructural improvements.
- To detail efforts in maintaining operational efficiency in a dynamic web environment.
Main Methods:
- Review and documentation of the Toolkit's development over a decade.
- Integration of external (e.g., BLAST+, HMMER3) and internal (e.g., HHpred, HHblits) bioinformatics tools.
- Infrastructural updates to ensure continued operability and performance.
Main Results:
- Significant expansion of the tool repertoire, including the addition of CS-BLAST and HHblits.
- Continuous increase in user queries, exceeding 400,000 in 2015.
- Sustained operational stability and performance through ongoing infrastructural work.
Conclusions:
- The MPI Bioinformatics Toolkit has successfully evolved over ten years, enhancing its capabilities.
- It remains a valuable and expanding resource for protein bioinformatic analysis for both experts and non-experts.
- The Toolkit serves as an excellent platform for experimental scientists and a teaching resource for life science students.
