PIPA - (Pipeline for Protein Annotation) provides a bioinformatics-based approach for predicting the functions and properties of a protein directly from its amino acid sequence. PIPA annotates protein functions by combining the results of multiple integrated programs and databases into common Gene Ontology (GO) [1] terms. The major algorithms implemented in PIPA include: (1) a profile database generation algorithm, which enables the generation of new, customized profile databases to enhance the prediction of particular protein functions, (2) an automated ontology mapping generation algorithm, which maps various classification schemes into GO, and (3) a consensus algorithm, which generates consensus annotations from the integrated programs and databases.
PIPA, deployed on two Linux clusters, jvn at the Army Research Laboratory Major Shared Resource Center and jaws at the Maui High Performance Computing Center, includes the following features: