Neuropeptides are small protein-like molecules (peptides) used by neurons to communicate with each other. They are neuronal signaling molecules that influence the activity of the brain in specific ways. Different neuropeptides are involved in a wide range of brain functions, including analgesia, food intake, metabolism, reproduction, social behaviors, learning and memory, and act as a number of roles such as hormone, modulators, transmitter of neuro and cytokines. Neuropeptides typically produced from larger precursor molecules by a series of post-translational processing. Generally, one precursor includes one signal peptide, one or more neuropeptide and other sequences. The study focus on neuropeptide is always a hotpot field of bioinformatics. But current neuropeptide databases lack authority evaluation of innovation and accuracy. Furthermore, there are some questions about database, for example, the delayed update leads to the deficiency of data, and the data is redundant and repeated. So the relative database is far insufficient to support follow-up studies. Meanwhile, the basic study should be supported powerfully by many neuropeptide predictive tools which have higher accuracy.
Statistics
Neuropeptide precursor entries:2545
Neuropeptide entries:6275
Neuropeptide family numbers: 66
Species numbers: 442