qPTMplants: an integrative database of quantitative post-translational modifications in plants

As a crucial molecular mechanism, post-translational modifications (PTMs) play critical roles in a wide range of biological processes in plants. Recent advances in mass spectrometry-based proteomic technologies have greatly accelerated the profiling and quantification of plant PTM events. Although several databases have been constructed to store plant PTM data, a resource including more plant species and more PTM types with quantitative dynamics still remains to be developed. In this paper, we present an integrative database of quantitative PTMs in plants named qPTMplants (http://qptmplants.omicsbio.info), which hosts 1 242 365 experimentally identified PTM events for 429 821 nonredundant sites on 123 551 proteins under 583 conditions for 23 PTM types in 43 plant species from 293 published studies, with 620 509 quantification events for 136 700 PTM sites on 55 361 proteins under 354 conditions. Moreover, the experimental details, such as conditions, samples, instruments and methods, were manually curated, while a variety of annotations, including the sequence and structural characteristics, were integrated into qPTMplants. Then, various search and browse functions were implemented to access the qPTMplants data in a user-friendly manner. Overall, we anticipate that the qPTMplants database will be a valuable resource for further research on PTMs in plants.