PCRPi-DB: a database of computationally annotated hot spots in protein interfaces

Protein–protein interactions are central to almost any cellular process. Although typically protein interfaces are large, it is well established that only a relatively small region, the so-called ‘hot spot’, contributes the most to the total binding energy. There is a clear interest in identifying hot spots because of its application in drug discovery and protein design. Presaging Critical Residues in Protein Interfaces Database (PCRPi-DB) is a public repository that archives computationally annotated hot spots in protein complexes for which the 3D structure is known. Hot spots have been annotated using a new and highly accurate computational method developed in the lab. PCRPi-DB is freely available to the scientific community at http://www.bioinsilico.org/PCRPIDB. Besides browsing and querying the contents of the database, extensive documentation and links to relevant on-line resources and contents are available to users. PCRPi-DB is updated on a weekly basis.