TMPDB: a database of experimentally-characterized transmembrane topologies

Abstract
TMPDB is a database of experimentally-characterized transmembrane (TM) topologies. TMPDB release 6.2 contains a total of 302 TM protein sequences, in which 276 are α-helical sequences, 17 β-stranded, and 9 α-helical sequences with short pore-forming helices buried in the membrane. The TM topologies in TMPDB were determined experimentally by means of X-ray crystallography, NMR, gene fusion technique, substituted cysteine accessibility method, N -linked glycosylation experiment and other biochemical methods. TMPDB would be useful as a test and/or training dataset in improving the proposed TM topology prediction methods or developing novel methods with higher performance, and as a guide for both the bioinformaticians and biologists to better understand TM proteins. TMPDB and its subsets are freely available at the following web site: http://bioinfo.si.hirosaki-u.ac.jp/~TMPDB/ .