SEEK: a systems biology data and model management platform.

BACKGROUND: Systems biology research typically involves the integration and analysis of heterogeneous data types in order to model and predict biological processes. Researchers therefore require tools and resources to facilitate the sharing and integration of data, and for linking of data to systems biology models. There are a large number of public repositories for storing biological data of a particular type, for example transcriptomics or proteomics, and there are several model repositories. However, this silo-type storage of data and models is not conducive to systems biology investigations. Interdependencies between multiple omics datasets and between datasets and models are essential. Researchers require an environment that will allow the management and sharing of heterogeneous data and models in the context of the experiments which created them. RESULTS: The SEEK is a suite of tools to support the management, sharing and exploration of data and models in systems biology. The SEEK platform provides an access-controlled, web-based environment for scientists to share and exchange data and models for day-to-day collaboration and for public dissemination. A plug-in architecture allows the linking of experiments, their protocols, data, models and results in a configurable system that is available 'off the shelf'. Tools to run model simulations, plot experimental data and assist with data annotation and standardisation combine to produce a collection of resources that support analysis as well as sharing. Underlying semantic web resources additionally extract and serve SEEK metadata in RDF (Resource Description Format). SEEK RDF enables rich semantic queries, both within SEEK and between related resources in the web of Linked Open Data. CONCLUSION: The SEEK platform has been adopted by many systems biology consortia across Europe. It is a data management environment that has a low barrier of uptake and provides rich resources for collaboration. This paper provides an update on the functions and features of the SEEK software, and describes the use of the SEEK in the SysMO consortium (Systems biology for Micro-organisms), and the VLN (virtual Liver Network), two large systems biology initiatives with different research aims and different scientific communities.

Challenges for an enzymatic reaction kinetics database.

The scientific literature contains a tremendous amount of kinetic data describing the dynamic behaviour of biochemical reactions over time. These data are needed for computational modelling to create models of biochemical reaction networks and to obtain a better understanding of the processes in living cells. To extract the knowledge from the literature, biocurators are required to understand a paper and interpret the data. For modellers, as well as experimentalists, this process is very time consuming because the information is distributed across the publication and, in most cases, is insufficiently structured and often described without standard terminology. In recent years, biological databases for different data types have been developed. The advantages of these databases lie in their unified structure, searchability and the potential for augmented analysis by software, which supports the modelling process. We have developed the SABIO-RK database for biochemical reaction kinetics. In the present review, we describe the challenges for database developers and curators, beginning with an analysis of relevant publications up to the export of database information in a standardized format. The aim of the present review is to draw the experimentalist's attention to the problem (from a data integration point of view) of incompletely and imprecisely written publications. We describe how to lower the barrier to curators and improve this situation. At the same time, we are aware that curating experimental data takes time. There is a community concerned with making the task of publishing data with the proper structure and annotation to ontologies much easier. In this respect, we highlight some useful initiatives and tools.

PresCont: predicting protein-protein interfaces utilizing four residue properties.

An important task of computational biology is to identify those parts of a polypeptide chain, which are involved in interactions with other proteins. For this purpose, we have developed the program PresCont, which predicts in a robust manner amino acids that constitute protein-protein interfaces (PPIs). PresCont reaches state-of-the-art classification quality on the basis of only four residue properties that can be readily deduced from the 3D structure of an individual protein and a multiple sequence alignment (MSA) composed of homologs. The core of PresCont is a support vector machine, which assesses solvent-accessible surface area, hydrophobicity, conservation, and the local environment of each amino acid on the protein surface. For training and performance testing, we compiled three nonoverlapping datasets consisting of permanently formed or transient complexes, respectively. A comparison with SPPIDER, ProMate, and meta-PPISP showed that PresCont compares favorably with these highly sophisticated programs, and that its prediction quality is less dependent on the type of protein complex being considered. This balance is due to a mutual compensation of classification weaknesses observed for individual properties: For PPIs of permanent complexes, solvent-accessible surface and hydrophobicity contribute most to classification quality, for PPIs of transient complexes, the assessment of the local environment is most significant. Moreover, we show that for permanent complexes a segmentation of PPIs into core and rim residues has only a moderate influence on prediction quality. PresCont is available as a web service at http://www-bioinf.uni-regensburg.de/.

SABIO-RK--database for biochemical reaction kinetics.

SABIO-RK (http://sabio.h-its.org/) is a web-accessible database storing comprehensive information about biochemical reactions and their kinetic properties. SABIO-RK offers standardized data manually extracted from the literature and data directly submitted from lab experiments. The database content includes kinetic parameters in relation to biochemical reactions and their biological sources with no restriction on any particular set of organisms. Additionally, kinetic rate laws and corresponding equations as well as experimental conditions are represented. All the data are manually curated and annotated by biological experts, supported by automated consistency checks. SABIO-RK can be accessed via web-based user interfaces or automatically via web services that allow direct data access by other tools. Both interfaces support the export of the data together with its annotations in SBML (Systems Biology Markup Language), e.g. for import in modelling tools.