Exploring parasite biology through their protein annotation in UniProtKB

Parasitic infections cause a major global burden in terms of human health whilst also affecting livestock and agriculture. Understanding their biology is essential to identify potential candidates for drug and vaccine development. To support the scientific community in this effort, the UniProt knowledgebase (UniProtKB) provides a comprehensive, high-quality and freely accessible resource of protein sequence and functional information for a wide range of species including parasites and, their hosts and vectors.

This webinar,part of aseries covering various aspects of UniProt, will give you an overview on what type of functional information we provide and how to search and retrieve it. We will also describe the curation process, including how we annotate sequence polymorphism, the interaction between host and parasite proteins, and how we highlight the potential biotechnological use of a protein. To illustrate these various aspects, we will use the parasiteP. falciparum, the causative agent of malaria, as an example.

Who is this course for?

This webinar is aimed at individuals who wish to learn more about using UniProt for parasite research. No prior knowledge of bioinformatics is required, but an undergraduate level knowledge of biology would be useful.

Outcomes

By the end of the webinar you will be able to:

• Recall the type of functional and sequence information UniProtKB provides for parasite proteins and where it comes from
• Find and retrieve information about parasite proteins in UniProtKB