sci-biology A protein motif fingerprint database maintained at the University of Manchester. A fingerprint is a group of conserved motifs used to characterise a protein family; its diagnostic power is refined by iterative scanning of a SWISS-PROT/TrEMBL composite. Usually the motifs do not overlap, but are separated along a sequence, though they may be contiguous in 3D-space. Fingerprints can encode protein folds and functionalities more flexibly and powerfully than can single motifs, full diagnostic potency deriving from the mutual context provided by motif neighbours.