Development of cu peptide database

Abstract

CU Peptide Database was developed as a tool for biochemists for calculating and predicting some peptide properties such as molecular weight, net charge, isoelectric point and hydropathic index. The CU Peptide Database was created to be accessed via the Internet. It is based on the Power Macintoch 7100/66 AV involving 4 software i.e. FileMaker Pro 3.0, WEB FM, WEBMASTER and Netscape navigator. The database is composed of 971 records containing peptide information. The CU Peptide Database web page, written in HTML and JavaScript, consists of four pages i.e. Introductory page, Search Form page, Results page and Details page. The Search Form page allows users to search for peptides using a variety of criteria with search operators and multiple fields. The Details page has a calculation facility for finding molecular weight weight, net charge and pl any peptides including unknown peptide with known sequence. The calculations of molecular weight and net charge were rapid, taking less than one second in processing. The calculation of pl takes 1 to 10 seconds depending on the size of the peptides. The CU Peptide Database was used was used perform the calculation of hydropathic indexes for three peptides in order to make comparison with spatial position of amino acid residues obtained from observation of x – ray diffraction images of these peptides (PDB file) on Rasmol, a molecular visualization program.