A new reference implementation of the PSICQUIC web service.

The Proteomics Standard Initiative Common QUery InterfaCe (PSICQUIC) specification was created by the Human Proteome Organization Proteomics Standards Initiative (HUPO-PSI) to enable computational access to molecular-interaction data resources by means of a standard Web Service and query language. Currently providing >150 million binary interaction evidences from 28 servers globally, the PSICQUIC interface allows the concurrent search of multiple molecular-interaction information resources using a single query. Here, we present an extension of the PSICQUIC specification (version 1.3), which has been released to be compliant with the enhanced standards in molecular interactions. The new release also includes a new reference implementation of the PSICQUIC server available to the data providers. It offers augmented web service capabilities and improves the user experience. PSICQUIC has been running for almost 5 years, with a user base growing from only 4 data providers to 28 (April 2013) allowing access to 151 310 109 binary interactions. The power of this web service is shown in PSICQUIC View web application, an example of how to simultaneously query, browse and download results from the different PSICQUIC servers. This application is free and open to all users with no login requirement (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/webservices/psicquic/view/main.xhtml).

InnateDB: systems biology of innate immunity and beyond--recent updates and continuing curation.

InnateDB (http://www.innatedb.com) is an integrated analysis platform that has been specifically designed to facilitate systems-level analyses of mammalian innate immunity networks, pathways and genes. In this article, we provide details of recent updates and improvements to the database. InnateDB now contains >196 000 human, mouse and bovine experimentally validated molecular interactions and 3000 pathway annotations of relevance to all mammalian cellular systems (i.e. not just immune relevant pathways and interactions). In addition, the InnateDB team has, to date, manually curated in excess of 18 000 molecular interactions of relevance to innate immunity, providing unprecedented insight into innate immunity networks, pathways and their component molecules. More recently, InnateDB has also initiated the curation of allergy- and asthma-related interactions. Furthermore, we report a range of improvements to our integrated bioinformatics solutions including web service access to InnateDB interaction data using Proteomics Standards Initiative Common Query Interface, enhanced Gene Ontology analysis for innate immunity, and the availability of new network visualizations tools. Finally, the recent integration of bovine data makes InnateDB the first integrated network analysis platform for this agriculturally important model organism.

GenePattern flow cytometry suite.

BACKGROUND: Traditional flow cytometry data analysis is largely based on interactive and time consuming analysis of series two dimensional representations of up to 20 dimensional data. Recent technological advances have increased the amount of data generated by the technology and outpaced the development of data analysis approaches. While there are advanced tools available, including many R/BioConductor packages, these are only accessible programmatically and therefore out of reach for most experimentalists. GenePattern is a powerful genomic analysis platform with over 200 tools for analysis of gene expression, proteomics, and other data. A web-based interface provides easy access to these tools and allows the creation of automated analysis pipelines enabling reproducible research. RESULTS: In order to bring advanced flow cytometry data analysis tools to experimentalists without programmatic skills, we developed the GenePattern Flow Cytometry Suite. It contains 34 open source GenePattern flow cytometry modules covering methods from basic processing of flow cytometry standard (i.e., FCS) files to advanced algorithms for automated identification of cell populations, normalization and quality assessment. Internally, these modules leverage from functionality developed in R/BioConductor. Using the GenePattern web-based interface, they can be connected to build analytical pipelines. CONCLUSIONS: GenePattern Flow Cytometry Suite brings advanced flow cytometry data analysis capabilities to users with minimal computer skills. Functionality previously available only to skilled bioinformaticians is now easily accessible from a web browser.

Preparing a Minimum Information about a Flow Cytometry Experiment (MIFlowCyt) compliant manuscript using the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) FCS file repository (FlowRepository.org).

FlowRepository.org is a Web-based flow cytometry data repository provided by the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC). It supports storage, annotation, analysis, and sharing of flow cytometry datasets. A fundamental tenet of scientific research is that published results should be open to independent validation and refutation. With FlowRepository, researchers can annotate their datasets in compliance with the Minimum Information about a Flow Cytometry Experiment (MIFlowCyt) standard, thus greatly facilitating third-party interpretation of their data. In this unit, we will mainly focus on the deposition, sharing, and annotation of flow cytometry data.

Curating the innate immunity interactome.

BACKGROUND: The innate immune response is the first line of defence against invading pathogens and is regulated by complex signalling and transcriptional networks. Systems biology approaches promise to shed new light on the regulation of innate immunity through the analysis and modelling of these networks. A key initial step in this process is the contextual cataloguing of the components of this system and the molecular interactions that comprise these networks. InnateDB (http://www.innatedb.com) is a molecular interaction and pathway database developed to facilitate systems-level analyses of innate immunity. RESULTS: Here, we describe the InnateDB curation project, which is manually annotating the human and mouse innate immunity interactome in rich contextual detail, and present our novel curation software system, which has been developed to ensure interactions are curated in a highly accurate and data-standards compliant manner. To date, over 13,000 interactions (protein, DNA and RNA) have been curated from the biomedical literature. Here, we present data, illustrating how InnateDB curation of the innate immunity interactome has greatly enhanced network and pathway annotation available for systems-level analysis and discuss the challenges that face such curation efforts. Significantly, we provide several lines of evidence that analysis of the innate immunity interactome has the potential to identify novel signalling, transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulators of innate immunity. Additionally, these analyses also provide insight into the cross-talk between innate immunity pathways and other biological processes, such as adaptive immunity, cancer and diabetes, and intriguingly, suggests links to other pathways, which as yet, have not been implicated in the innate immune response. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, curation of the InnateDB interactome provides a wealth of information to enable systems-level analysis of innate immunity.

hybseek: pathogen primer design tool for diagnostic multi-analyte assays.

Due to recent advances in genome sequencing, the detection of pathogens by DNA signatures, i.e. by oligonucleotide sequences that uniquely identify a specific genome, is becoming increasingly popular in modern clinical diagnostics. However, currently available screening methods, such as PCR and microarrays, lack multiplexing and sensitivity, respectively. Solid-phase amplification (SPA) is an emerging approach with the potential to overcome these limitations. SPA-based diagnostic assays require both pathogen-specific and compatible primer pairs for many, often closely related pathogens. Currently, none of the available tools supports an automated design of such primer sets, making it an iterative, labor-intensive, and often difficult procedure. Here we describe hybseek, a Web interface for efficient design of both pathogen-specific and compatible primer pairs for DNA-based diagnostic multi-analyte assays. hybseek achieves pathogen-specificity by selecting only candidates with unique 3(') subsequence, and the degree of this uniqueness is quantitatively expressed by a specificity score. qPCR experimental data confirm the feasibility of our design strategy. The service is freely available at https://www.hybseek.com.