Skrabanek Lucy, Murcia Marta, Bouvier Michel, Devi Lakshmi, George Susan R, Lohse Martin J, Milligan Graeme, Neubig Richard, Palczewski Krzysztof, Parmentier Marc, Pin Jean-Philippe, Vriend Gerrit, Javitch Jonathan A, Campagne Fabien, Filizola Marta
Department of Physiology & Biophysics, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY, USA.
BMC Bioinformatics. 2007 May 30;8:177. doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-8-177.
G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) are a large and diverse family of membrane proteins whose members participate in the regulation of most cellular and physiological processes and therefore represent key pharmacological targets. Although several bioinformatics resources support research on GPCRs, most of these have been designed based on the traditional assumption that monomeric GPCRs constitute the functional receptor unit. The increase in the frequency and number of reports about GPCR dimerization/oligomerization and the implication of oligomerization in receptor function makes necessary the ability to store and access information about GPCR dimers/oligomers electronically.
We present here the requirements and ontology (the information scheme to describe oligomers and associated concepts and their relationships) for an information system that can manage the elements of information needed to describe comprehensively the phenomena of both homo- and hetero-oligomerization of GPCRs. The comprehensive information management scheme that we plan to use for the development of an intuitive and user-friendly GPCR-Oligomerization Knowledge Base (GPCR-OKB) is the result of a community dialog involving experimental and computational colleagues working on GPCRs.
Our long term goal is to disseminate to the scientific community organized, curated, and detailed information about GPCR dimerization/oligomerization and its related structural context. This information will be reported as close to the data as possible so the user can make his own judgment on the conclusions drawn for a particular study. The requirements and ontology described here will facilitate the development of future information systems for GPCR oligomers that contain both computational and experimental information about GPCR oligomerization. This information is freely accessible at http://www.gpcr-okb.org.
G蛋白偶联受体（GPCRs）是一个庞大且多样的膜蛋白家族，其成员参与大多数细胞和生理过程的调节，因此是关键的药理学靶点。尽管有几种生物信息学资源支持对GPCRs的研究，但其中大多数是基于传统假设设计的，即单体GPCRs构成功能受体单元。关于GPCR二聚化/寡聚化的报道频率和数量不断增加，以及寡聚化在受体功能中的作用，使得有必要具备以电子方式存储和获取有关GPCR二聚体/寡聚体信息的能力。
我们在此介绍一个信息系统的要求和本体（用于描述寡聚体及相关概念及其关系的信息方案），该系统能够管理全面描述GPCRs同源和异源寡聚化现象所需的信息元素。我们计划用于开发直观且用户友好的GPCR寡聚化知识库（GPCR-OKB）的综合信息管理方案，是参与GPCR研究的实验和计算领域同事进行社区对话的结果。
我们的长期目标是向科学界传播有关GPCR二聚化/寡聚化及其相关结构背景的有组织、经过整理且详细的信息。这些信息将尽可能贴近数据进行报告，以便用户能够对特定研究得出的结论自行做出判断。此处描述的要求和本体将有助于未来开发包含有关GPCR寡聚化的计算和实验信息的GPCR寡聚体信息系统。该信息可在http://www.gpcr-okb.org免费获取。
