CD-Search: protein domain annotations on the fly

Abstract

We describe the Conserved Domain Search service (CD-Search), a web-based tool for the detection of structural and functional domains in protein sequences. CD-Search uses BLAST(R) heuristics to provide a fast, interactive service, and searches a comprehensive collection of domain models. Search results are displayed as domain architecture cartoons and pairwise alignments between the query and domain-model consensus sequences. Search results may be visualized in further detail by embedding the query sequence into multiple alignment displays and by mapping onto three-dimensional molecular graphic displays of known structures within the domain family. CD-Search can be accessed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/cdd/wrpsb.cgi.