AnnoDUF: A\nWeb-Based Tool for Annotating Functions\nof Proteins Having Domains of Unknown Function

The rapid expansion of biological sequence databases\ndue to high-throughput\ngenomic and proteomic sequencing methods has left a considerable number\nof identified protein sequences with unclear or incomplete functional\nannotations. Domains of unknown function (DUFs) are protein domains\nthat lack functional annotations but are present in numerous proteins.\nTo address the challenge of finding functional annotations for DUFs,\nwe have developed a computational method that efficiently identifies\nand annotates these enigmatic protein domains by utilizing the position-specific\niterative basic local alignment search tool (PSI-BLAST) and data mining\ntechniques. Our pipeline identifies putative potential functionalities\nof DUFs, thereby decreasing the gap between known sequences and functions.\nThe tool can also take user input sequences to annotate. We executed\nour pipeline on 5111 unique DUF sequences obtained from Pfam, resulting\nin putative annotations for 2007 of these. These annotations were\nsubsequently incorporated into a comprehensive database and interfaced\nwith a web-based server named “AnnoDUF”. AnnoDUF is\nfreely accessible to both academic and industrial users, via the World\nWide Web at the link http://bts.ibab.ac.in/annoduf.php. All scripts used in this\nstudy are uploaded to the GitHub repository, and these can be accessed\nfrom https://github.com/BioToolSuite/AnnoDUF.