ELM--the database of eukaryotic linear motifs

Dinkel H, Michael S, Weatheritt RJ, Davey NE, Van Roey K, Altenberg B, Toedt G, Uyar B, Seiler M, Budd A, Jödicke L, Dammert MA, Schroeter C, Hammer M, Schmidt T, Jehl P, McGuigan C, Dymecka M, Chica C, Luck K, Via A, Chatr-Aryamontri A, Haslam N, Grebnev G, Edwards RJ, Steinmetz MO, Meiselbach H, Diella F & Gibson TJ (2012): ELM—the database of eukaryotic linear motifs. Nucleic Acids Research 40(D1): D242-D251.

Abstract

Linear motifs are short, evolutionarily plastic components of regulatory proteins and provide low-affinity interaction interfaces. These compact modules play central roles in mediating every aspect of the regulatory functionality of the cell. They are particularly prominent in mediating cell signaling, controlling protein turnover and directing protein localization. Given their importance, our understanding of motifs is surprisingly limited, largely as a result of the difficulty of discovery, both experimentally and computationally. The Eukaryotic Linear Motif (ELM) resource at http://elm.eu.org provides the biological community with a comprehensive database of known experimentally validated motifs, and an exploratory tool to discover putative linear motifs in user-submitted protein sequences. The current update of the ELM database comprises 1800 annotated motif instances representing 170 distinct functional classes, including approximately 500 novel instances and 24 novel classes. Several older motif class entries have been also revisited, improving annotation and adding novel instances. Furthermore, addition of full-text search capabilities, an enhanced interface and simplified batch download has improved the overall accessibility of the ELM data. The motif discovery portion of the ELM resource has added conservation, and structural attributes have been incorporated to aid users to discriminate biologically relevant motifs from stochastically occurring non-functional instances.

PMID: 22110040

Interactome-wide prediction of short, disordered protein interaction motifs in humans

Edwards RJ, Davey NE, O’Brien K & Shields DC (2012): Interactome-wide prediction of short, disordered protein interaction motifs in humans. Molecular Biosystems 8: 282-95.

Abstract

Many of the specific functions of intrinsically disordered protein segments are mediated by Short Linear Motifs (SLiMs) interacting with other proteins. Well known examples include SLiMs that interact with 14-3-3, PDZ, SH2, SH3, and WW domains but the true extent and diversity of SLiM-mediated interactions is largely unknown. Here, we attempt to expand our knowledge of human SLiMs by applying in silico SLiM prediction to the human interactome. Combining data from seven different interaction databases, we analysed approximately 6000 protein-centred and 1600 domain-centred human interaction datasets of 3+ unrelated proteins that interact with a common partner. Results were placed in context through comparison to randomised datasets of similar size and composition. The search returned thousands of evolutionarily conserved, intrinsically disordered occurrences of hundreds of significantly enriched recurring motifs, including many that have never been previously identified (). In addition to True Positive results for at least 25 different known SLiMs, a striking number of “off-target” proteins/domains also returned significantly enriched known motifs. Often, this was due to the non-independence of the datasets, with many proteins sharing interaction partners or contributing interactions to multiple domain datasets. The majority of these motif classes, however, were also found to be significantly enriched in one or more randomised datasets. This highlights the need for care when interpreting motif predictions of this nature but also raises the possibility that SLiM occurrences may be successfully identified independently of interaction data. Although not as compositionally biased as previous studies, patterns matching known SLiMs tended to cluster into a few large groups of similar sequence, while novel predictions tended to be more distinctive and less abundant. Whether this is due to ascertainment bias or a true functional composition bias of SLiMs is not clear and warrants further investigation.

PMID: 21879107