Description:
Description

STORM combines protein analyses of BLAST, FASTA, Pfam and ProtParam on a batch-file of protein sequences. It subsequently summarizes and organizes the output in an Access database format.

More specifically, STORM extracts protein sequences after ORF prediction and subsequently performs an automatic analysis for each of the proteins. This analysis consists of web-based similarity searches (BLASTp and FASTA) as well as Pfam predictions and Protparam calculations of protein physicochemical properties. The raw output for these analyses is then analysed and summarized. All these steps require a minimal amount of user interaction (ONLY A FEW MOUSE-CLICKS!!!) and all the data is stored in a Microsoft Access database, allowing control over the raw output as well as the summarized information by this program (However, the access database is not strictly required for creating a summary). This program is widely applicable for any set of proteins, but was initially developed primarily to analyse bacteriophage genomes.

The STORM program is a lightweight program, can be active simultaneously with other programs running on the PC and consists of 4 modules (Figure 1). Each of these modules is an independent program, generating an output used in the following module.