This week, we profile Phobius an online — TM or signal peptide predictor developed by Dr. Lukas Käll at the Royal Institute of Technology – KTH, Dr. Anders Krogh at the University of Copenhagen and Dr. Erik Sonnhammer from Stockholm University. Dr. Käll kindly answered our questions.
- In one tweet or less, introduce us to your tool/database/website.
Phobius provides a combined transmembrane protein topology and signal peptide prediction from a proteins amino acid sequence. The combination makes sense as traditional predictor often confuse the two types of prediction as both types of proteins can contains a long n-terminal hydrophobic stretch.
- Why is your tool or special?
The tool represent the first combined predictor.
- Who is your target audience?
Sequence annotators, or any person interested in predicting signal peptides or transmembrane proteins.
- Why did you create your tool??
Seeing the problem of cross predictions between signal peptide and n-terminal membrane helices I just wanted to have a type of prediction to trust.
- What is your greatest success story so far?
The tool is very well cited. There are several great success stories of the tool.
- What improvements are coming in the future?
None.
- Who is the team behind your tool?
Lukas Käll, Royal Institute of Technology – KTH Anders Krogh, University of Copenhagen Erik Sonnhammer, Stockholm University
Thanks to Dr. Lukas Käll for guiding us through his awesome tool. Be sure to check out their plugin in the plugin library.