Expansin Engineering Database: Protein Sequences for Biomass Degradation

Expansins are proteins that loosen plant cell walls without catalytic activity, offering potential for biomass degradation applications. The Expansin Engineering Database (ExED) collects sequence and structure data on expansins from Bacteria, Fungi, and Viridiplantae, along with expansin-like homologues. It was created by Caroline Lohoff at the University of Stuttgart to support sequence-structure-function studies and the search for novel expansins.

Use Cases

• Identifying conserved key amino acids in expansin domains based on global sequence alignment.
• Annotating genomes for expansin-like genes using newly created profile hidden Markov models.
• Classifying expansins and carbohydrate binding modules based on sequence network analysis.
• Searching for novel candidate genes for biomass degradation using new sequence motifs.

Strengths

• Includes data on expansins from three major biological kingdoms (Bacteria, Fungi, Viridiplantae).
• Integrates multiple data types, including sequence and structure data, for analysis.
• Provides a refined classification system for expansins and carbohydrate binding modules.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

University of Stuttgart

Collection Method

Collected from public sequence and structure databases.