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SignalP 3.1.ws0

Prediction of signal peptide and cleavage sites in gram+, gram- and eukaryotic amino acid sequences


WSDL SignalP/SignalP_3_1_ws0.wsdl
Schema definitions ../common/ws_common_1_0b.xsd
ws_signalp_3_1_ws0.xsd

We recommend that the first time users should load the WSDL file above to SoapUI and investigate the Web Service operations in that environment. SoapUI is a desktop application for inspecting, invoking, developing and functional/load/compliance testing of Web Services over HTTP. It can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.soapui.org/.

Examples of client side scripts using the service

FilenameTypeCompatibilityAuthorDescription
xml-compile.pl (3.2 KB) Perl NA Peter Fischer Hallin
Helper scripts used to initiate XML::Compile's proxys (WSDL+XSD)
signalp.pl (2.0 KB) Perl 3.1 ws0 Peter Fischer Hallin
Runs SignalP on one or more sequences, read in fasta format from STDIN
example.fsa (1.3 KB)
test_signalp.pl (3.4 KB) Perl 3.1 ws0 Peter Fischer Hallin
Runs SignalP Web Service.
soapui-errors.log (0 B)
soapui.log (4.9 KB)
soapui-settings.xml (869 B) XML

Usage

# download the required scripts
wget http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/ws/SignalP/examples/xml-compile.pl
wget http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/ws/SignalP/examples/signalp.pl

perl signalp.pl < example.fsa 

Documentation

    INTRODUCTION

    This Web Service implements SignalP v. 3.1. It predicts  the presence and
    location of signal peptide cleavage sites in amino acid sequences from
    different organisms: Gram-positive prokaryotes, Gram-negative prokaryotes,
    and eukaryotes. The method incorporates a prediction of cleavage sites
    and a signal peptide/non-signal peptide prediction based on a combination
    of several artificial neural networks and hidden Markov models. The method
    is described in detail in the following article:

    Improved prediction of signal peptides: SignalP 3.0.
    J D Bendtsen, H Nielsen, G v Heijne and S Brunak.
    J. Mol. Biol., 340:783-795, 2004.

    The difference between v. 3.0 and this version is only technical; the
    predictions are the same.

    Alongside this Web Service the SignalP method is also implemented as
    a traditional click-and-paste WWW server at:

      http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/SignalP/

    The traditional server offers more detailed output (graphics), extended
    functionality  and comprehensive documentation. It is suitable for close
    investigation of few proteins; this service is recommended for high
    throughput projects.

    SignalP 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?signalp

    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:

            * 'organism' - organism type of the input sequences (mandatory)
                "euk"     eukaryotes
                "gram-"   Gram-negative prokaryotes
                "gram+"   Gram-positive prokaryotes

            * 'method' - prediction method (optional)
                "nn"      neural network only
                "hmm"     hidden Markov models only
                "nn+hmm"  both methods (default)

            * 'thnn' - threshold for yes/no decision by neural nets (optional)
                The threshhold setting affects the 'comment' field in the
                output (see below): if the neural net score is higher than
                the selected threshold the comment will be "Y", else "N".
                The default thresholds are 0.43 for "euk", 0.45 for "gram+"
                and 0.44 for "gram-"; the defaults have been shown to give
                the highest correlation coefficient on test data.
                Note: 'thnn' does not affect the signalp-hmm prediction output.

            * 'sequencedata'   [containing multiple 'sequence' element]
              * 'sequence'
                * 'id'         Unique identifier for the sequence
                * 'comment'    Optional comment
                * 'seq'        Protein sequences, with unique identifiers (mandatory) 
                               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. All the input sequences are truncated to 70 aa from
                               the N-terminal. Currently, at most 2,000 sequences are allowed
                               per submission.

    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: 
            * 'annsource'
                'method'      : SignalP (options ...)
                'version'     : 3.1 ws0

            * 'ann'             (array of annotations - one element per input sequence)
                'sequence'      (standard sequence object)
                 'id'        : Sequence identifier
                 'comment'   : Sequence comment
                 'seq'       : Sequence
               'annrecords'    (array of predicted features for this sequence)
                 'annrecord'   (annotation record)
                 'feature    : either 'signal-nn' or 'signal-hmm'
                 'range'
                   'begin'   : 1
                   'end'     : End postion of signal
                 'score'
                   'key'     : Either nn_score or hmm_score
                   'value    : Prediction score:
                                For "signalp-3.1-nn" D score, for "signalp-3.1-hmm"
                                the signal peptide branch probability (see the
                                article)
                 'comment     : Answer: For "signalp-3.1-nn" the answer is "Y" (yes) and "N"
                                (no) depending on the selected threshold. 
                               For "signalp-3.1-hmm" the answer is "S" f or signal
                               peptide, "A" for signal anchor ("euk" only) and "Q"
                               for none of the above.

    KNOWN BUGS

    2007-01-30    Error handling: some error messages may be non-informative;
                  fix in progress;

    2007-01-29    The server side may time out processing large submission;
                  temporary fix: submit not more than 2,000 sequences at a
                  time; permanent fix in progress.


    CONTACT

    Questions concerning the scientific aspects of the SignalP method should
    go to Henrik Nielsen, hnielsen@cbs.dtu.dk; technical questions concerning
    the Web Service should go to Peter Fischer Hallin, pfh@cbs.dtu.dk or
    Kristoffer Rapacki, rapacki@cbs.dtu.dk.