PerMemDB

The majority of all proteins in cells interact with membranes either permanently or temporarily. These include transmembrane proteins – which bypass the lipid bilayer – or other proteins and peptides that form transient complexes with membrane proteins and/or lipids, via non-covalent interactions. The latter are called peripheral membrane proteins and are of outmost importance, due to numerous cellular functions in which they participate.

PerMemDB is currently the most complete and comprehensive repository of data for peripheral membrane proteins from all reference eukaryotic proteomes deposited in UniProt or predicted with the use of MBPpred, an algorithm developed in our lab that specializes in the detection of membrane binding proteins. The database contains 231770 peripheral membrane proteins from 1009 organisms. All entries have cross-references to other databases, literature references and annotation regarding their interactions with other proteins. Moreover, entries collected with the use of MBPpred have additional information, regarding their characteristic domains that allow them to interact with membranes.

Through the web interface of PerMemDB, users can browse the contents of the database, submit advanced text searches and BLAST queries against the protein sequences deposited in PerMemDB. We expect this repository to serve as a source of information for the deeper understanding of the role of peripheral membrane proteins in cells, in addition to proteome-wide analyses.