Question

Which of the following statements about PRINTS and ProDom databases is incorrect regarding its features?

(a) PRINTS is a compendium of protein fingerprints

(b) Usually the motifs do not overlap, but are separated along a sequence, though they may be contiguous in 3D-space

(c) Current versions of ProDom are built using a novel procedure based on recursive BLAST searches

(d) ProDom domain database consists of an automatic compilation of homologous domains

The question was asked in unit test.

Enquiry is from Protein Family Databases topic in chapter Sequence Alignment of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Correct answer is (c) Current versions of ProDom are built using a novel procedure based on recursive BLAST searches

The best I can explain: Current versions of ProDom are built using a novel procedure based on recursive PSI-BLAST searches and not just BLAST searches. And PRINTS is indeed a compendium of protein fingerprints. A fingerprint is a group of conserved motifs used to characterise a protein family; its diagnostic power is refined by iterative scanning of UniProt.