INTRODUCTION This Web Service implements NetChop v. 3.1. It produces neural network predictions for cleavage sites of the human proteasome. The method is described in detail in the following article: The role of the proteasome in generating cytotoxic T cell epitopes: Insights obtained from improved predictions of proteasomal cleavage. M Nielsen, C Lundegaard, O Lund, and C Kesmir. Immunogenetics., 57(1-2):33-41, 2005. Alongside this Web Service the NetChop method is also implemented as a traditional click-and-paste WWW server at: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/NetChop/ NetChop is also available as a stand-alone software package to install and run at the user's site, with the same functionality. For academic users there is a download page at: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/cgi-bin/nph-sw_request?netchop Other users are requested to write to software@cbs.dtu.dk for details. WEB SERVICE OPERATION This Web Service is fully asynchronous; the usage is split into the following three operations: 1. runService Input: The following parameters and data: * 'method' - prediction method 0 for "C term 3.0", 1 for "20S 3.0"; * 'threshold' - threshold for yes/no decision The default is 0.5; increasing the threshold results in better specificity, but worse sensitivity * 'sequences' - protein sequences, with unique identifiers The sequences must be written using the one letter amino acid code: `acdefghiklmnpqrstvwy' or `ACDEFGHIKLMNPQRSTVWY'. Other letters will be converted to `X' and treated as unknown amino acids. Other symbols, such as whitespace and numbers, will be ignored. Output: Unique job identifier 2. pollQueue Input: Unique job identifier Output: 'jobstatus' - the status of the job Possible values are QUEUED, ACTIVE, FINISHED, WAITING, REJECTED, UNKNOWN JOBID or QUEUE DOWN 3. fetchResult Input: Unique job identifier of a finished job Output: 'output' - prediction results For each input residue a record is output consisting of the following fields: seqname truncated to 10 characters in ver. 3.1a source "netchop-3.1a" (fixed string) feature "cleavage" (fixed string) start,end residue number (given twice) score prediction score strand,frame N/A comment answer ("S" for yes, "." for no) CONTACT Questions concerning the scientific aspects of the NetChop method should go to Morten Nielsen, mniel@cbs.dtu.dk; technical question concerning the Web Service should go to Peter Fischer Hallin, pfh@cbs.dtu.dk or Kristoffer Rapacki, rapacki@cbs.dtu.dk.