MultitaskProtDB-II: an update of a database of multitasking/moonlighting proteins

Abstract

Multitasking, or moonlighting, is the capability of some proteins to execute two or more biological functions. MultitaskProtDB-II is a database of multifunctional proteins that has been updated. In the previous version, the information contained was: NCBI and UniProt accession numbers, canonical and additional biological functions, organism, monomeric/oligomeric states, PDB codes and bibliographic references. In the present update, the number of entries has been increased from 288 to 694 moonlighting proteins. MultitaskProtDB-II is continually being curated and updated. The new database also contains the following information: GO descriptors for the canonical and moonlighting functions, three-dimensional structure (for those proteins lacking PDB structure, a model was made using Itasser and Phyre), the involvement of the proteins in human diseases (78% of human moonlighting proteins) and whether the protein is a target of a current drug (48% of human moonlighting proteins). These numbers highlight the importance of these proteins for the analysis and explanation of human diseases and target-directed drug design. Moreover, 25% of the proteins of the database are involved in virulence of pathogenic microorganisms, largely in the mechanism of adhesion to the host. This highlights their importance for the mechanism of microorganism infection and vaccine design. MultitaskProtDB-II is available at http://wallace.uab.es/multitaskII.

Harnessing host–virus evolution in antiviral therapy and immunotherapy

“…This challenge is familiar to the very viruses that exploit such proteins in the first instance, yet their success also implies its soundness as an antiviral strategy. Illustrating that multifunctional host proteins can be ‘druggable’, 48% of the 694 human multitasking proteins annotated by Franco‐Serrano et al . are already targets of known compounds, compared with 9.8% of all 26 199 human proteins listed in UniProt.…”

Structural and Functional Dynamics of Staphylococcus aureus Biofilms and Biofilm Matrix Proteins on Different Clinical Materials

“…The cytoplasmic proteins with predicted multitasking functions [82,83] formed the biggest group among all identified proteins, independent of the biofilm substrate used. The presence of cytoplasmic proteins in the extracellular milieu has been widely explained with cell lysis/leakage.…”

Understanding protein multifunctionality: from short linear motifs to cellular functions

“…The MoonProt database [45] contains more than 350 proteins that pertain to the strict definition of moonlighting proteins (as described above) and were identified through manual curation of published articles providing experimental evidence supporting the presence of multiple functions. The MultitaskProtDB [7] stores more than 650 manually curated multifunctional proteins, not necessarily sticking to the strict definition of moonlighting proteins. Both databases provide the description of both canonical and additional functions including the PubMed identifier(s) of supporting experimental evidence, several protein annotations (e.g., Gene Ontology) and cross-references to other relevant databases such as OMIM [46] and the PDB [47].…”

“…Under a strict definition, moonlighting proteins perform multiple functions "without partitioning these functions into different protein domains" [4]. However, less stringent definitions of moonlighting proteins have been recently used, adopting terms such as 'multitask proteins' and 'extreme multifunctional proteins', focusing on the fact that the proteins are indeed involved in diverse unrelated functions, regardless of their evolutionary history or domain organisation [5][6][7]. In this view, moonlighting functions may be performed by any region of the protein surface, often involving regions other than the one responsible for the canonical function [8].…”