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Functional Roles

The functional role of a feature is the task it performs in the host organism. The role is stored in the NMPDR database as a descriptive phrase. For a Protein Encoding Gene that generates a known protein, the functional role will be the protein name. Some functional roles correspond to EC Numbers. In that case, the EC number is shown in parentheses at or near the end of the text, as shown in the table below.

For some features, the functional role is well-known; however, in most cases the role is assigned by inference (see Feature Annotation). As more data comes in from the Genome Pipeline, our ability to infer functional roles improves. For this reason, the functional role assigned to a feature may change over time. The current best guess for a feature's functional role is called its functional assignment. On the Genome Viewer Annotation Page, the current functional assignment is shown, and a button is provided that allows you to see previous assignments (see also Assertions).

It is important to be able to find genes that perform the same functional role; however, since functional roles are described using free-form text, this is not always possible. In the NMPDR, subsystems and FIGfams are used to find functional roles that should be the same, and we use this information to derive a canonical description of the functional role.

Special Punctuation

A single gene may have multiple functional roles, or we may be unsure of the functional role. This is indicated by special punctuation characters as follows.

Further Reading

• Searching By Functional Role
• Annotation