MERITS: a web-based integrated mycobacterial PE/PPE protein database

Motivation; PE/PPE proteins, highly abundant in the Mycobacterium genome, play a vital role in virulence and immune modulation. Understanding their functions is key to comprehending the internal mechanisms of Mycobacterium. However, a lack of dedicated resources has limited research into PE/PPE proteins. Results: Addressing this gap, we introduce MERITS, a comprehensive 3D structure database specifically designed for PE/PPE proteins. MERITS hosts 22,353 non-redundant PE/PPE proteins, encompassing details like physicochemical properties, subcellular localisation, post-translational modification sites, protein functions, and measures of antigenicity, toxicity, and allergenicity. MERITS also includes data on their secondary and tertiary structure, along with other relevant biological information. MERITS is designed to be user-friendly, offering interactive search and data browsing Features to aid researchers in exploring the potential functions of PE/PPE proteins. MERITS is expected to become a crucial resource in the field, aiding in developing new diagnostics and vaccines by elucidating the sequence-structure-functional relationships of PE/PPE proteins.