MOTIVATED PROTEINS is a web facility devoted to a range of small hydrogen-bonded motifs, such as Beta Turns, Schellman Loops and Beta Bulges, which are common constituents of the three-dimensional structure of proteins. The ‘Motif Glossary’ lists the available motifs and provides a comprehensive definition of each of them. The ‘Introduction’ section provides illustrations of the facilities available, bibliographic and author information, and links to software and data downloads.
Most users will be interested either in a particular protein or a particular motif. For any of the 430 proteins in the database you can search for individual or overlapping motifs in that protein, and motifs near ligands or active sites. If you are interested in a particular motif, ‘Specific Motifs’ gives you access to all the examples of that motif in the database. A key feature of Motivated Proteins is the ability to view the three-dimensional structure of motifs and their hydrogen bonding.
Motivated Proteins was established in 2008 and since then more motifs have been added. In 2021 we launched Motivated Proteins 2, which uses a separate database of over 4000 proteins and allows searches for motifs in the context of different protein architecture, as categorized by SCOPe. The larger database of proteins does not include active sites and ligands, however, as they require manual curation. For these and some other features the original Motivated Proteins provides a source of representative examples.