In Russian, the word scop (cκon) can mean a 'pile' or 'accumulation'. In English, however, it stands for something completely different — the 'structural classification of proteins', a widely used database for the investigation of protein structures and sequences.
The SCOP database was officially launched in 1995 by Alexey Murzin, Steven Brenner, Tim Hubbard and Cyrus Chothia at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. The database now has mirror sites around the world for faster local access, and has recently been updated (version 1.61, November 2002).
When SCOP was launched, its aims were to provide “a detailed and comprehensive description of ... structural and evolutionary relationships”, as well as providing “links to co-ordinates, images of the structure, interactive viewers, sequence data and literature references”. This it now does, and much more.
The site has extensive linking through to entries in the Protein Data Bank, and is searchable at several different levels (structural similarity, keywords). The curators point out that the database is of use to experimental structural biologists (for exploring the 'structure space' near their protein of interest) and theoreticians (who can browse the various protein folds), as well as to molecular biologists, who can use the classifications in the database to locate proteins of interest.
On the down-side, the site is uninspiring in design and the amount of information is a little overwhelming for the first-time user. But there's a clear 'help' page explaining the features and layout of the site. And with so much functionality available, who needs much in the way of form?
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Mitchell, A. SCOP means structure. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 4, 8 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm1028
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm1028
