ORCAN—a web‐based meta‐server for real‐time detection and functional annotation of orthologs

Summary: ORCAN (ORtholog sCANner) is a web‐based meta‐server for one‐click evolutionary and functional annotation of protein sequences. The server combines information from the most popular orthology‐prediction resources, including four tools and four online databases. Functional annotation utilizes five additional comparisons between the query and identified homologs, including: sequence similarity, protein domain architectures, functional motifs, Gene Ontology term assignments and a list of associated articles. Furthermore, the server uses a plurality‐based rating system to evaluate the orthology relationships and to rank the reference proteins by their evolutionary and functional relevance to the query. Using a dataset of ˜1 million true yeast orthologs as a sample reference set, we show that combining multiple orthology‐prediction tools in ORCAN increases the sensitivity and precision by 1‐2 percent points. Availability and Implementation: The service is available for free at http://www.combio.pl/orcan/. Contact: wmk@amu.edu.pl Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

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