The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) is Europe's equivalent to the NCBI, based near Cambridge.
First, open a link to the EBI web site: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/
Click the headings below to explore some features of the EBI web site.
On the main page of the EBI web site you will find general information about the EBI. Click the Services link at the very top to see an overview of the services they offer.
A major service offered by the EBI is UniProt - The Universal Protein Resource. It is jointly maintained with the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics in Geneva, which we will visit in the next page of this tutorial.
UniProt consists of two parts:
From the Services page, scroll to the bottom of the page and select Data resources and tools. Scroll down and click on UniProt.
The box at the top gives you access to a simple text search
Type human cystic fibrosis in the Query box at the top and click the Search button. Select the >b>Table view.
You will now see a page of entries which contained the text you typed. Each entry is given an entry name or 'identifier' (or 'Entry name' - which looks like XXXX_XXXXX - a protein name followed by the species) and an 'accession' (or 'Entry' code - a series of letters and numbers).
Remembering the name of the cystic-fibrosis gene which you identified from OMIM, record the accession ('entry') code for the protein involved in human cystic fibrosis.
Now follow the link for this protein by clicking on the accession code. Click the Sequence and isoforms link on the left to scroll down to the Sequences section. You will see that there are multiple isoforms (resulting from alternative splicing). Use the 'canonical' sequences to answer the following:
Record the number of amino acids that the protein contains.
Click Names & Taxonomy to scroll back to the top of the page to the section entitled Names and Taxonomy
Record the gene name for the Cystic fibrosis protein.
Click Function to scroll up to the Function section
Record the key function of the protein.
Click the Subcellular location button to scroll down to the Subcellular location section to find information on Transmembrane regions.
Record how many predicted trans-membrane regions the protein has.
The EBI also provides a Bioinformatics Educational Resource, Train online. This provides free courses on using EBI resources created by experts at the EBI and collaborating institutions.