Sagar Sunil, Kaur Mandeep, Dawe Adam, Seshadri Sundararajan Vijayaraghava, Christoffels Alan, Schaefer Ulf, Radovanovic Aleksandar, Bajic Vladimir B
South African National Bioinformatics Institute, University of the Western Cape, Private Bag- X17, Modderdam Road, Bellville, Cape Town 7535, South Africa.
BMC Genomics. 2008 Dec 20;9:622. doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-9-622.
Sodium channels are heteromultimeric, integral membrane proteins that belong to a superfamily of ion channels. The mutations in genes encoding for sodium channel proteins have been linked with several inherited genetic disorders such as febrile epilepsy, Brugada syndrome, ventricular fibrillation, long QT syndrome, or channelopathy associated insensitivity to pain. In spite of these significant effects that sodium channel proteins/genes could have on human health, there is no publicly available resource focused on sodium channels that would support exploration of the sodium channel related information.
We report here Dragon Database for Exploration of Sodium Channels in Human (DDESC), which provides comprehensive information related to sodium channels regarding different entities, such as "genes and proteins", "metabolites and enzymes", "toxins", "chemicals with pharmacological effects", "disease concepts", "human anatomy", "pathways and pathway reactions" and their potential links. DDESC is compiled based on text- and data-mining. It allows users to explore potential associations between different entities related to sodium channels in human, as well as to automatically generate novel hypotheses.
DDESC is first publicly available resource where the information related to sodium channels in human can be explored at different levels. This database is freely accessible for academic and non-profit users via the worldwide web http://apps.sanbi.ac.za/ddesc.
钠通道是异源多聚体整合膜蛋白，属于离子通道超家族。编码钠通道蛋白的基因突变与多种遗传性疾病相关，如热性癫痫、布加综合征、心室颤动、长QT综合征或与通道病相关的痛觉不敏感。尽管钠通道蛋白/基因可能对人类健康有这些重大影响，但目前尚无专注于钠通道的公开资源来支持对钠通道相关信息的探索。
我们在此报告人类钠通道探索龙数据库（DDESC），它提供了与钠通道相关的不同实体的全面信息，如“基因和蛋白质”、“代谢物和酶”、“毒素”、“具有药理作用的化学物质”、“疾病概念”、“人体解剖学”、“途径和途径反应”及其潜在联系。DDESC是基于文本和数据挖掘编制的。它允许用户探索与人类钠通道相关的不同实体之间的潜在关联，并自动生成新的假设。
DDESC是首个可在不同层面探索人类钠通道相关信息的公开资源。该数据库可供学术和非盈利用户通过全球网络http://apps.sanbi.ac.za/ddesc免费访问。
