AnnoDUF: A Web-Based Tool for Annotating Functions of Proteins having Domains of Unknown Function (DUFs)

The rapid expansion of biological sequence databases due to high-throughput genomic and proteomic sequencing methods has left a considerable number of identified protein sequences with unclear or incomplete functional annotations. DUFs are protein domains that lack functional annotations but are present in numerous proteins. To address the challenge of finding functional annotations for DUFs, we have developed a computational method, which efficiently identifies and annotates these enigmatic protein domains by utilizing PSI-BLAST and data mining techniques. Our pipeline identifies putative potential functionalities of DUFs, thereby decreasing the gap between known sequences and functions. The tool can also take user input sequences to annotate. We executed our pipeline on 4,775 unique DUF sequences obtained from Pfam, resulting in putative annotations for 1,971 of these. These annotations were subsequently incorporated into a comprehensive database and interfaced with a web-based server named AnnoDUF. AnnoDUF is freely accessible to both academic and industrial users, via World Wide Web at the link http://bts.ibab.ac.in/annoduf.php.