An emerging cyberinfrastructure for biodefense pathogen and pathogen–host data

Zhang, C.; Crasta, O.; Cammer, S.; Will, R.; Kenyon, R.; Sullivan, D.; Yu, Q.; Sun, W.; Jha, R.; Liu, D.; Xue, T.; Zhang, Y.; Moore, M.; McGarvey, P.; Huang, H.; Chen, Y.; Zhang, J.; Mazumder, R.; Wu, C.; Sobral, B.

Researchers have realized the importance of integrating proteomics, transcriptomics, genetics and metabolite data to interpret and predict gene function, complex regulatory mechanisms and to discover targets and biomarkers (4, 6, 18, 19) . In addition, open source software systems have been developed and used for integrating heterogeneous data from local or geographically distributed databases (20) (21) (22) . However, integrating 'omics' data across different databases is still a challenge because of database heterogeneity, particularly the lack of a centralized vocabulary control for the metadata describing the experiment design, and the absence of unifying identifiers. A significant advantage of the RC is that all data has been integrated based on the UniProtKB accession number. These identifiers allow queries across data types and experiments, thereby enabling complex analyses of pathogen and host systems. By using the integrated data resource in the RC, researchers can be facilitated in their discovery and validation of pathogen and host interaction profiles.