{"id":"about","title":"About UniProt","lastModified":"2026-06-05","type":"help","content":"The mission of UniProt is to provide the scientific community with a comprehensive, high-quality and freely accessible resource of protein sequence and functional information.\n\nThe Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) is a comprehensive resource for protein sequence and annotation data. The UniProt databases are the [UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProtKB)](https://www.uniprot.org/help/uniprotkb), the [UniProt Reference Clusters (UniRef)](https://www.uniprot.org/help/uniref), and the [UniProt Archive (UniParc)](https://www.uniprot.org/help/uniparc). The UniProt consortium and host institutions EMBL-EBI, SIB and PIR are committed to the long-term preservation of the UniProt databases.\n\n\n\nUniProt is a collaboration between the [European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)](https://www.ebi.ac.uk/), the [SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics](https://www.sib.swiss/) and the [Protein Information Resource (PIR)](https://proteininformationresource.org/). Across the three institutes more than [100 people](https://www.uniprot.org/help/uniprot_staff) are involved through different tasks such as database curation, software development and support.\n\nEMBL-EBI and SIB together used to produce Swiss-Prot and TrEMBL, while PIR produced the Protein Sequence Database (PIR-PSD). These two data sets coexisted with different protein sequence coverage and annotation priorities. TrEMBL (Translated EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Data Library) was originally created because sequence data was being generated at a pace that exceeded Swiss-Prot's ability to keep up. Meanwhile, PIR maintained the PIR-PSD and related databases, including iProClass, a database of protein sequences and curated families. In 2002 the three institutes decided to pool their resources and expertise and formed the UniProt consortium.\n\nThe UniProt consortium is headed by [Alex Bateman](https://www.uniprot.org/help/bateman), [Paul D. Thomas](https://www.uniprot.org/help/thomas) and [Cathy Wu](https://bioinformatics.udel.edu/people/cathy-wu-phd/), supported by [key staff](https://www.uniprot.org/help/key_staff), and receives valuable input from an independent [Scientific Advisory Board](https://www.uniprot.org/help/sab).\n\n# Funding\n\nUniProt is supported by the [National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)](https://www.genome.gov/), Office of Director [OD/DPCPSI/ODSS]; [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)](https://www.niaid.nih.gov/), [National Institute on Aging (NIA)](https://www.nia.nih.gov/), [National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)](https://www.nigms.nih.gov/), [National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)](https://www.niddk.nih.gov/), [National Eye Institute (NEI)](https://nei.nih.gov/), [National Cancer Institute (NCI)](https://www.cancer.gov/),[National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)](https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/) of the [National Institutes of Health (NIH)](https://www.nih.gov/) [U24HG007822]; Additional support for the EMBL-EBI's involvement in UniProt comes from [European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)](https://www.embl.org/) core funds. UniProt activities at the SIB are additionally supported by the Swiss Federal Government through the [State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI](https://www.sbfi.admin.ch/sbfi/en/home.html), and by the Novo Nordisk Foundation grant NNF25SA0110272.\n\n# Past funding\n\nUniProt has been supported by the NIH grants U01HG02712 (2002-2010) and U41HG006104 (2010-2014).\n\nUniProt activities at EMBL-EBI have benefited from the FP7 SLING project (2009-2012, contract number 226073), British Heart Foundation grants SP/07/007/23671 and RG/13/5/30112, the Parkinson's Disease United Kingdom GO grant G-1307 and the NIH GO grant U41HG02273.\n\nUniProt activities at SIB have benefited from EC support through the FP6 FELICS project (2006-2009, contract number 021902), and the FP7 projects SLING (2009-2012, contract number 226073), [GEN2PHEN](https://gen2phen.org/) (2009-2013, contract number 200754), and [MICROME](http://www.microme.eu/) (2009-2013, contract number 222886-2).\n\nUniProt activities at PIR have benefited from NIH grants HHSN266200400061C (2004-2009), R01GM080646 (2007-2011), R01GM080646-04S2 (2009-2012), R01GM080646-07S1 (2012), and P20RR016472-09S2 (2009-2011), NSF grants DBI-0138188 (2002-2005) and IIS-0430743 (2004-2007), and UNIDEL Foundation award (2010-2012).\n\n# Data preservation\nUniProt conforms with [EMBL-EBI's long-term data preservation](https://www.ebi.ac.uk/long-term-data-preservation) policies.\n\n# Further information\n\n- [The Universal Protein Resource](https://github.com/ebi-uniprot/uniprot-manual/raw/main/pdfs/uniprot_flyer.pdf) printable reference card for the UniProt databases\n\n- [How to cite us](https://www.uniprot.org/help/publications)\n\n# Logo\n\nThe UniProt logo is available [here in SVG format](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ebi-uniprot/uniprot-website/main/src/images/uniprot-logo.img.svg).\n\n# Contact the UniProt consortium members\n\n![](\"https://github.com/ebi-uniprot/uniprot-manual/raw/main/images/embl-logo.png\")
\n\n[European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)](https://www.ebi.ac.uk/) \nWellcome Trust Genome Campus \nHinxton Cambridge CB10 1SD \nUnited Kingdom \nPhone: (+44) 1223 494 444 \nFax: (+44) 1223 494 468\n\n
\n\n\n\n[SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics](https://www.sib.swiss/) \nCentre Medical Universitaire \n1, rue Michel Servet \n1211 Geneva 4 \nSwitzerland \nPhone: (+41) 22 379 50 50 \nFax: (+41) 22 379 58 58\n\n
\n\n\n\n[Protein Information Resource (PIR)](https://proteininformationresource.org/) \nGeorgetown University Medical Center \n2115 Wisconsin Ave NW \nSuite 200A \nWashington, DC 20007 \nUnited States of America ","categories":["About UniProt","Staff","UniProtKB","UniRef","UniParc","help"]}