UniRule – Automatic Annotation In UniProtKB

The UniProt KnowledgeBase (UniProtKB) provides a stable, comprehensive, freely accessible, centralized resource on protein sequences and functional annotation. UniProtKB consists of two sections: UniProtKB/SwissProt, a section containing records that are manually annotated with information extracted from the literature and curator-evaluated computational analysis, and UniProtKB/TrEMBL, a section containing computationally analysed records enriched with automatic annotation and classification.Automatic annotation is an essential complement to manual annotation, which cannot keep pace with either current or projected rates of growth of UniProtKB. To this end UniProt is developing an integrated annotation system termed UniRule, which is based on both manually curated and automatically generated annotation rules and signatures. UniRule provides a variety of annotation types including protein names, general functional annotation in the form of free text and controlled vocabularies, sequence annotation including domains and residues of functional importance, and inferred family relationships.At the time of writing (UniProtKB release 2010_08), UniRule provides annotations for around 30% of more than 11 million UniProtKB/TrEMBL entries. The UniRule system and plans for its future development will be presented.