Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2004 Jan 1;32(Database issue):D138-41.
doi: 10.1093/nar/gkh121.

The Pfam protein families database

Alex Bateman  1 , Lachlan Coin, Richard Durbin, Robert D Finn, Volker Hollich, Sam Griffiths-Jones, Ajay Khanna, Mhairi Marshall, Simon Moxon, Erik L L Sonnhammer, David J Studholme, Corin Yeats, Sean R Eddy
Affiliations

The Pfam protein families database

Alex Bateman et al. Nucleic Acids Res. .

Abstract

Pfam is a large collection of protein families and domains. Over the past 2 years the number of families in Pfam has doubled and now stands at 6190 (version 10.0). Methodology improvements for searching the Pfam collection locally as well as via the web are described. Other recent innovations include modelling of discontinuous domains allowing Pfam domain definitions to be closer to those found in structure databases. Pfam is available on the web in the UK (http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Software/Pfam/), the USA (http://pfam.wustl.edu/), France (http://pfam.jouy.inra.fr/) and Sweden (http://Pfam.cgb.ki.se/).

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Comparison of Pfam, SCOP and CATH domain definitions for S-adenosylmethionine synthetase. The definitions of SCOP and Pfam are very similar, but rather different from the stricter structural definition of CATH. The definitions can be compared at the level of structure for each database. The two Rasmol windows on the right show the Pfam definition above the CATH definition.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Structure image coloured by Pfam domain, including a coloured domain key below. This structure shows the complex of P27, cyclin and CDK2. Clicking on the image links to the PDBsum resource (10).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

  • Pfam: clans, web tools and services.
    Finn RD, Mistry J, Schuster-Böckler B, Griffiths-Jones S, Hollich V, Lassmann T, Moxon S, Marshall M, Khanna A, Durbin R, Eddy SR, Sonnhammer EL, Bateman A. Finn RD, et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 2006 Jan 1;34(Database issue):D247-51. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkj149. Nucleic Acids Res. 2006. PMID: 16381856 Free PMC article.
  • The Pfam protein families database.
    Bateman A, Birney E, Cerruti L, Durbin R, Etwiller L, Eddy SR, Griffiths-Jones S, Howe KL, Marshall M, Sonnhammer EL. Bateman A, et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 2002 Jan 1;30(1):276-80. doi: 10.1093/nar/30.1.276. Nucleic Acids Res. 2002. PMID: 11752314 Free PMC article.
  • The Pfam protein families database.
    Finn RD, Tate J, Mistry J, Coggill PC, Sammut SJ, Hotz HR, Ceric G, Forslund K, Eddy SR, Sonnhammer EL, Bateman A. Finn RD, et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 2008 Jan;36(Database issue):D281-8. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkm960. Epub 2007 Nov 26. Nucleic Acids Res. 2008. PMID: 18039703 Free PMC article.
  • Pfam 10 years on: 10,000 families and still growing.
    Sammut SJ, Finn RD, Bateman A. Sammut SJ, et al. Brief Bioinform. 2008 May;9(3):210-9. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbn010. Epub 2008 Mar 15. Brief Bioinform. 2008. PMID: 18344544 Review.
  • The evolution of protein domain families.
    Buljan M, Bateman A. Buljan M, et al. Biochem Soc Trans. 2009 Aug;37(Pt 4):751-5. doi: 10.1042/BST0370751. Biochem Soc Trans. 2009. PMID: 19614588 Review.
See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Bateman A., Birney,E., Durbin,R., Eddy,S.R., Howe,K.L. and Sonnhammer,E.L.L. (2000) The Pfam protein families database. Nucleic Acids Res., 28, 263–266. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bateman A., Birney,E., Cerruti,L., Durbin,R., Etwiller,L., Eddy,S.R., Griffiths-Jones,S., Howe,K.L., Marshall,M. and Sonnhammer,E.L.L. (2002) The Pfam protein families database. Nucleic Acids Res., 30, 276–280. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Boeckmann B., Bairoch,A., Apweiler,R., Blatter,M.C., Estreicher,A., Gasteiger,E., Martin,M.J., Michoud,K., O’Donovan,C., Phan,I. et al. (2003) The SWISS-PROT protein knowledgebase and its supplement TrEMBL in 2003. Nucleic Acids Res., 31, 365–370. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Corpet F., Servant,F., Gouzy,J. and Kahn,D. (2000) ProDom and ProDom-CG: tools for protein domain analysis and whole genome comparisons. Nucleic Acids Res., 28, 267–269. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lo Conte L., Brenner,S.E., Hubbard,T.J., Chothia,C. and Murzin,A.G. (2002) SCOP database in 2002: refinements accommodate structural genomics. Nucleic Acids Res., 30, 264–267. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

  NODES
innovation 1
INTERN 1
twitter 2